


Bonds of Brotherhood

by MsBarrows



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Dom/sub, Dubious Consent, F/M, Hurt, Implied Torture, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, pre-game
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-07-30
Updated: 2012-06-03
Packaged: 2017-11-06 18:24:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 18
Words: 39,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsBarrows/pseuds/MsBarrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zevran-in-my-head has been telling me for a while now that I need to write a piece about his background with Taliesen and, eventually, Rinna. I've finally given in and started it off. This is very loosely related to my Right Choices story, as it's the background of the particular version of him that's in that story. His description is a little non-canon because I run with a slightly tweaked version of him in my game and like him more that way - in my Dragon Age, he has dark blue eyes, and coppery brunette hair that's less of a contrast with his skin then his default blond is, and his tattoo is a paler brown instead of stark black.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Impressions

**Author's Note:**

> This story is actually pretty mild, overall - it was the first time I was writing a story that I wanted to include explicit sex scenes in, most of my previous writing having been done for posting on a PG-13 site. I kind of threw myself in the deep end with BoB by having it not just be largely about sex, but about a rather dark and twisted relationship. I eventually put the story aside for what was meant to be just a short while and dived into writing on the kink meme to try and get more comfortable with writing smutty bits (which, clearly, I've succeeded at...). And over six months later finally got back to gradual work on finishing this. With luck I'll get it wrapped before its one-year anniversary rolls around...
> 
> Zevran-in-my-head has evolved a fair bit since I first started writing this, and split off into multiple clones of himself as well, but this is still the overall meta headcanon for my Zevrans' past.

"Taliesen! A moment please."

Taliesen stopped and turned, giving a slight bow of acknowledgement when he saw who had hailed him. "Master Kerrel," he said warily. "How many I help you?"

Kerrel smiled warmly at him. "I was just wishing to have a few minutes of your time – later, of course," he added smoothly as a faint frown creased Taliesen's brow "I know you're too busy at the moment. This evening, perhaps? A dinner at San Regio's... my private room, of course."

Taliesen barely hesitated, then nodded. "Of course, it will be my pleasure," he said.

"Excellent. At the eighth hour, perhaps? That should allow plenty of time for you to get your new partner settled in before meeting with me."

Taliesen bit back a sigh. Did _everyone_ know what business he was here on? Well, of course, as a Master Crow, Kerrel had likely known about the appointment before _he_ even had. "Of course," he answered calmly. "The eighth hour is fine."

Master Kerrel nodded, then turned and strode off.

Taliesen resumed his interrupted walk along the corridor, then up the stairs to the office of the Apprentice Master, disgruntled once again that he was apparently to be saddled with a raw trainee, freshly out of his trials, instead of someone with experience. On the other hand, his previous partner had been _experienced_ , and look what an idiot he'd turned out to be. The standards of training must have slipped deplorably for Rafe to have made it through his trials alive.

Taliesen allowed himself a faint feeling of satisfaction at his memory of his last sight of his previous partner; thrashing on the floor and foaming at the mouth as the poison took him. The idiot should have known better then to come within reach of the girl. But she'd sat up in her bed, dressed in something indecently filmy, and looked at Rafe, lip quivering and big tears rolling down her cheeks, and the fool had _fallen_ for it... had moved closer, within striking range of the lovely little ring on her delicate little hand. Well, he'd paid for his foolishness; and Taliesen had made sure she'd paid for her audacity before carrying out the contract. She hadn't noticed that there was a _second_ Crow in her room until far, far too late... even now the memory sent a pleasant frisson along his nerves, picturing her face in the exact moment when she'd seen him, and realized that she'd missed the greater danger.

He reached the door to the Apprentice Master's office, and knocked. He waited for an acknowledging call before opening the door and walking in; one did not walk in on any Master without having their permission first. Not as long as one wanted to continue living, anyway.

"Master Edelbach," he said, bowing respectfully to the man in question.

"Ah, good, Taliesen – as always, you are impeccably punctual. I wish more of my students were as obedient. Such as a certain elf who..."

The Master suddenly turned, a knife spinning from his hand toward a nearby window just as Taliesen became aware of the faint breeze that must have drawn the Master's attention. A slight figure was crouched on the windowsill, and even as Taliesen gaped at him, he snatched the dagger out of mid-air, fingers wrapping securely around the hilt, and grinned at Master Edelbach. "I am not late, am I?" he asked, eyes wide and voice all innocence, then tossed the dagger back in a gentle, high curve that ended with it standing point-first in the Master's desk.

"I might have known," Edelbach muttered, as he retrieved the dagger and made it disappear again into whatever hidden sheath he'd first produced it from. "Use the _door_ next time, Zevran. And _knock first_."

The elf – Zevran – smiled even wider. "But it is so much more fun coming in the window," he said plaintively, then turned to look at Taliesen with interest.

"Perhaps so, but one of these days you'll either startle me into a heart attack, or fail to stop me from killing you, and you know how much I would hate that," Master Edelbach said dryly as he sat down behind his desk. He turned to look at Taliesen. "This is Zevran. He's your responsibility now, Maker help you."

Taliesen frowned and looked the elf over. He was still crouched in the window embrasure, balanced on the balls of his feet, arms crossed loosely over his knees. He had darkly tanned skin, and startlingly vivid dark blue eyes. Coppery-brown hair with sun-bleached blond highlights brushed his shoulders. A wide grin crossed his face, and then he leapt gracefully down to the floor, and walked over to the desk, leaning on it while giving Taliesen a thorough head-to-toe examination of his own. From this angle Taliesen could see the graceful lines tattooed into one side of his face, accentuating the curve of his brow and cheek. Taliesen frowned; the mark was far too unique, made him far too noticeable. If it had been one of the traditional patterns, it might have been acceptable, he'd be just another tattooed elf like any other tattooed elf, but he'd never be able to blend unnoticeably into a crowd with _that_ on his face.

Tearing his attention away from Zevran, he looked at Master Edelbach. " _This_ is my new partner?" he asked, letting a little of his unhappiness with the situation leak into his voice.

Master Edelbach leaned back in his chair. "Yes," he said coolly. "You've gone through three partners in as many months. _Three_! Years of training..." he said, shaking his head at the implied waste.

"So, what – I'm being stuck with someone more _expendable_ now?" Taliesen snarled.

"No. Someone more _durable_ ," the Master snapped back. "Oh, I'll agree that the last two were hardly your fault, Taliesen," he said, flapping one hand dismissively. "I don't know what Rutger was thinking, giving Rafe a passing grade when he was far from ready for it – if he'd been one of _mine_ , he wouldn't even have been allowed to start his trials yet," he added archly, then gave a disdainful sniff, clearly dismissing Rutger, his training methods, and his apprentices. "And it was just plain bad luck that Jeron turned out to have that particular allergy. But it doesn't look good to some of the Masters, so..." he waved a hand at Zevran. "Do _try_ not to break him."

Zevran grinned. "I do not break easily," he said complacently.

"No, that's true," Edelbach said, and smiled warmly at the elf. " _Do_ keep in touch. I will be most fascinated to hear all about your little exploits."

Zevran grinned at him, then to Taliesen's shock leaned across the desk and gave the Master a very heated kiss. On the lips. With _tongue_ , if he wasn't mistaken. "For you, any time," the elf said, voice low and husky, then stood and stepped back, turning to give Taliesen an interested look. "Shall we go?" he asked.

Taliesen stared at him. "Err... yes..." he stuttered.

They were almost to the door when Edelbach coughed. "Zevran..."

"Yes, oh most learned one?" Zevran asked, turning around with a wide smile on his face, walking backward for a moment.

"I'd like my purse back please. And my left-hand dagger. You know that's one of my favourites."

Zevran's smile widened. "Of course," he said, coming to a stop. He produced the items, tossed them through the air to land on the desk in front of Edelbach, and grinned happily.

"You may keep the other dagger," Edelbach added dryly. "Damn thing won't hold an edge anyway."

Zevran laughed. "And here I thought you'd finally missed noticing me take something."

Edelbach laughed as well. "You're not quite that good... yet." he said fondly.

Zevran bowed his head in acknowledgement, then followed Taliesen out of the room.

* * *

Taliesen led the way out of the training school, and toward the building where his rented rooms were. More rooms then he really needed, but when he'd first contracted for them he'd been planning to be the leader of a _real_ team soon, an entire cell, with at least three or four members, well on his way to eventual masterhood... instead, he'd spent his first half-year on his own, and once he did gain a partner, he and Marna had rattled around in the rooms for years, working hard together, slowly building their reputation, until they'd finally been trusted with a third. And then the damned ignorant boy had managed to get himself _and_ Marna killed in a particularly stupid fashion, and... well, dreams died hard.

He'd had a string of junior partners since – by then he was senior enough, established enough, that when he requested one he had to be given one – but he'd never had the closeness with them that he'd had with Marna. And he'd never managed to make the kind of name for himself that he craved. The hard contracts, the tricky ones, the ones that could make or break someone's name, the plum assignments, they all went to others. While _he_ got stuck with common, garden-variety killings. Even that pretty bit who'd killed Rafe had been no one special, just a mistress whose philandering ways had annoyed her current petty-merchant patron once too often.

He glanced at the elf striding confidently along at his side. This Zevran was clearly well-regarded by Master Edelbach; he'd never seen the old fart so obviously pleased with a student before. He must be something pretty special. He certainly didn't _look_ all that special... just another elf, pretty and graceful, the way all of them were. He wondered it it was the prettiness or the skill that had landed him in Edelbach's bed. The skill, he guessed, though the prettiness likely helped. Edelbach had never been one for getting unduly attached to his apprentices, not when so few of them survived the rigorous training he put them through. There'd certainly never been so much as a rumour about him and anyone else when _Taliesen_ had been one of his apprentices.

He climbed the stairs to his rooms – an exterior staircase, open to the elements, and normally quite creaky – and was annoyed to notice that the elf managed to climb it soundlessly, only the faint whisper of his clothing betraying his presence, and even that only audible because of how close behind Taliesen he was following. He _was_ good .

Taliesen unlocked the door and led the way into his – their – quarters. The elf looked around the sizable common room with unabashed interest. "Kitchen through there," Taliesen said, gesturing. "If you ever feel like cooking; I don't. The tavern downstairs has a reasonably decent cook. Nothing special, but good for the price. Bathing room through there, and bedrooms down that hallway. Last on the left is mine, take whichever other one you feel like. You might need to clean it out first."

Zevran nodded, and prowled around the room, sticking his head into the kitchen and the bathing room before disappearing down the hallway. Taliesen threw himself down in his favourite chair, the one in the corner with the good view of the door and the one decent-sized window, feeling disgruntled.

Even if this elf was good, he was still nothing more then a newly graduated apprentice. No reputation yet. Whatever work they might get for the foreseeable future would depend solely on Taliesen's reputation, and after the outcomes of his last few missions... well, they weren't likely to be particularly good jobs. Just a hair higher then the sort of junk someone would hire a common street thug for; the sort of job where the only reason it was given to the Crows was for the message implicit in having it done _by_ a Crow – that "I want you injured or dead badly enough to pay serious money to have it done" sort of message.

Zevran glided back into the room, as silently and gracefully as he'd left. The small pack he'd been carrying was gone; presumably now stashed in whichever of the rooms he'd chosen to claim as his own. He threw himself down on the dingy couch, stretched in a way that showed off his lean physique , and smiled toothily at Taliesen. "So, now what?" he asked.

Taliesen snorted, rose to his feet. "Lunch. And you're paying for your own," he warned.

Zevran nodded, bounced lightly to his feet, and followed Taliesen back downstairs.


	2. The Falconer

Taliesen waited until the servant who'd led him to the room had left, then bowed gracefully to the waiting man. "Master Kerrel."

"Taliesen," the Master said, acknowledging his presence with a slight bow of the head, then gracefully gestured to the chair across from him with an open hand. "Please, be seated."

Warily, Talisein walked over and lowered himself into the indicated chair, glancing around the room as he did so. It was very pleasant, the walls of pale whitewashed stucco, a narrow window in one wall – little more then an arrow-slit – letting in the evening breeze, and the scent of the gardens in back of the restaurant. The room was stark in its simplicity, free of any drapes, hangings, or plants that might hide an assassin, its only decor a richly coloured and carved carpet covering most of the floor, and the gracefully curved shapes of the table and chairs.

"How may I be of service to you, Master Kerrel?" Taliesen formally asked.

Kerrel smiled, and picked up his wine glass, savouring the bouquet before taking a single small sip. He put the glass back down on the table, in the precise spot he'd lifted it from, then dabbed at his lips with his napkin, before finally answering.

"In several ways," he said quietly. "I must admit to a... great _curiosity_ about your new partner. Master Edelbach has been overheard bragging about how... _accomplished_ he is. Even before he finished his trials. Several of my compatriots have dismissed his claims as idle rumours started by a clearly besotted man, but I must admit to having my doubts. Edelbach is many things, but he has never been a fool. Tell me, what's _your_ opinion of the elf?"

Taliesen shifted uneasily in his chair, and toyed with the stem of his own glass of wine, but did not drink. "He... seems very skilled," he reluctantly admitted. The two of them had sparred for a while that afternoon, both to keep their skills in practise and to become used to each other's ways in combat. It had actually been difficult to maintain his edge over the elf; _years_ of experience under his belt, and it had nearly been a draw; only his greater working knowledge of nasty tricks had bought him a win in the end, and he suspected that by the next time they fought, the elf would already have learned or thought up a counter to the move he'd used.

"Ah," Kerrel said quietly, and took a second small sip of his wine, again followed by the finicky patting-dry of his lips. "High praise indeed, from one reluctant to give it," he said dryly. "You dislike him."

Taliesen shot him a startled look, then frowned, feeling irked. "I don't care for him," he reluctantly admitted, hating that he was apparently so transparent to this man.

"Good," Kerrel said, sounding pleased, then gestured towards Taliesen's untouched glass. "Please, drink up. It's quite an excellent vintage, I assure you."

Taliesen pursed his lips, but did as ordered; given his position – or rather, his lack of real position – within the guild, he could hardly do otherwise. The wine was good; far better then anything _he_ could afford. It galled him, knowing Master Kerrel was only a handful of years older then himself, but a Master, rich, influential, high in the councils of the guild, while he... was nothing.

Kerrel ate a few bites of his meal, then settled back in his chair, wine glass in hand, and held it up, admiring its deep red colour.

"Do you know, there are many ways to become a Master," he said, almost conversationally, his tone deliberately casual. "There is of course the time honoured method of killing an existing Master and taking his place; rare, these days, as it requires both a very high level of skill, and a very great deal of ambition – and we Masters have of necessity become _very_ good at spotting such and dealing with it _before_ it can become a threat to us. And then there is being so good that the other Masters declare you are one of them, which thankfully is much more the accepted method these days – and also very rare, since there is only room for so many at the top."

He put the glass down on the table again, leaned forward, and begin idly tracing his finger along the smooth surface of the table. "Of course, one doesn't actually need to be good at _being_ a Crow to be considered for Mastership," he added, and titled his head sideways, darting a sideways glance at Taliesen. "One can also just be... very good at _controlling_ those who are particularly good at being a Crow."

Taliesen gave him a thoughtful look. "You are speaking of... one _particular_ Crow," he said softly.

"Yes," Kerrel said, and sat back, eyes twinkling merrily. "I've always said you were an intelligent man, though unfortunately plagued with ill-luck in partners. From everything I've heard of him, this Zevran has the potential to fly... very high indeed. Luckily for him, he is also entirely lacking in ambition, or he'd likely already have been dealt with by one of my more impetuous fellows," he added, wriggling his fingers dismissively. "For reasons of my own, I'd prefer it if his full potential is never realized; if, instead of flying high, he remains a hooded bird, safely cared for by a trustworthy falconer, only allowed to fly when on the hunt. The falconer would, of course, have many rewards..." he trailed off suggestively.

"Such as?" Taliesen asked cautiously.

"Oh, many things," Kerrel said, smiling, looking very pleased. "Good contracts, of course, once it's been proven you can fly your young falcon. More birds, in time – and someday, once you've proven yourself adept enough at it, at least a minor mastership for yourself."

It was, Taliesen reluctantly admitted to himself, a generous offer. He'd dreamed of being a Master – not just any master, but one of the greats – when he was younger, but while he didn't lack in ambition, he'd eventually had to face the fact that his skills were... not as great as they would need to be. He'd then hoped to at least form a good cell of Crows, gain a name and a reputation and achieve at least a minor mastership, and even that had eluded him. And now... here it was, being offered to him, if only he could keep one annoying elf in check.

The decision was ridiculously easy. He nodded acceptance.

Kerrel smiled warmly at him."Good. Please, enjoy the remainder of your meal; I have business I must attend to."

He stood, bowed his head, and walked away. Taliesen considered leaving as well, but then thought of how long it might well be before _he_ could afford to buy a meal here himself, and settled down to enjoy the wine and food, idly day-dreaming of a future in which he really could afford such things.

* * *

Taliesen studied the elf through half-lowered eyelids, watching as he ran through a lengthy series of exercises, some designed to keep him limber and flexible, others to build strength in his slight frame.

He had yet to identify what he might be able to use as a leash, a way of controlling the impetuous elf. Certainly not any ability of his to physically defeat the other assassin, he thought sourly; in the few weeks since they'd become partners, the damned elf had already learned almost all his tricks.

He'd thought for a while that it might be Zevran's sensuality that could be used against him, but the elf seemed to have all of the morals of a cat in heat, and little concern over the sex, age, or appearance of his partners, as long as they were both reasonably enthusiastic and reasonably skilled. Or even unskilled but very enthusiastic. At least he hadn't needed to be told to keep his bed games out of their quarters; very few of his conquests had any idea at all where he lived, and those few who did knew they weren't welcome beyond the foot of the stairs.

Taliesen had briefly considered bedding the elf himself, but his interests had never run to men. Of course he could function with them – his training under Edelbach had naturally included that as a requirement – but he'd never really enjoyed that aspect of things. Thankfully his looks were against him for most jobs involving the use of a compliant male, so he'd never had to exercise those particular skills outside of passing his training.

He suspected that Zevran, on the other hand, had thoroughly enjoyed that phase of things.

But since his own tastes didn't run that way, and he doubted he had the skills to inspire an overwhelming passion for himself in the elf – assuming the elf was even capable of such a thing – that had quite early on been dropped from his list as a potential means of control. Frustratingly, apart from his wholehearted enjoyment of sexual activities, the elf was so far proving to be without any of the little foibles that might have provided a handle on him. He enjoyed fine food and drink, but not to excess, and he scorned the addictive habits some Crows were incautious enough to fall into – the smokes, the drinks, the other substances that a skilled poisoncrafter learned of early on. He liked money, but was only concerned enough about it to want to have enough to spend on the little luxuries he enjoyed, not to amass it for its own sake as some men did. And while he clearly liked his little luxuries, he quite cheerfully went without any he couldn't currently afford, or was unable to convince one of his many admirers to supply him with.

It was deeply frustrating, this lack of _needs_ of his. The more time Taliesen spent in his company, the more he was coming to dislike the elf. Why couldn't this have proven to be something _easy_...


	3. Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> " _As far as enjoying the act of killing itself, why not? There is a certain artistry to the deed, the pleasure of sinking your blade into their flesh and knowing that their life is in your hands."_
> 
> _\- Zevran_

Taliesen growled in annoyance and staggered over to the door, peering out the spyhole in the wall nearby. A messenger boy; as if well aware of the eyes upon him he held up a hand, thumb tucked against palm to hold the token hidden in his cupped palm; a crow's feather. With a muttered oath, Taliesen unlocked the door. "Yes?" he said, eagerly.

The messenger silently handed over a tightly rolled scroll, its ends pinched shut and sealed with wax, accepted a small coin in return, and scampered back down the steps. Taliesen closed the door, then squeezed the waxen seals in his hand, shattering them, shards of brittle wax raining to the floor around his bare feet. Zevran walked in as he was unrolling the scroll; the elf's eyes widened, and a wide grin lit his face, teeth showing whitely against dark golden skin. "A commission?" he asked, moving closer.

"Yes," Taliesen said, eyes skimming down the words. He felt a matching grin spreading across his own face. "A good one."

And it _was_ good, the sort of contract he and Marna had just been starting to win in their best days, before they got saddled with that young idiot and she died. If anything, it's _too_ good for his current level of reputation. His enjoyment curdled as he glanced at the elf and knew _why_ they've been given such a plum for their first assignment as a team; because of Zevran. Either Edelbach has pulled strings so his favourite new graduate would get off to a good start, or Kerrel has arranged this as a test of both Zevran's ability to kill, and Taliesen's ability to control him. Possibly even an unwitting overlap of both their circles of influence.

"May I see?"Zevran asked. Taliesen wordlessly handed over the scroll. Zevran's smile widened as he, too, skimmed through the description of their target. "A Rivaini merchant prince? I wonder who he's managed to annoy – and how..."

"None of our business," Taliesen growled.

"Yes, yes, I know, but I am nothing if not curious. Do we have a deadline... ah, before he returns to Rivain, which is not due for... a week. Can we do this in a week?"

"We have to," Taliesen said brusquely. "We'd better get started."

Zevran nodded, tossed the scroll aside, and stretched, then pushed back his hair and adjusted his clothes in a series of little nervous gestures that just happened, Taliesen knew, to check the location and accessibility of all his main weapons and tools. Taliesen was going through his own series of similar habitual gestures. The two grinned at each other, for once in perfect accord.

No mention had been made of location or method for the kill; that was all being left to their own choice. They would have to start by scouting their target, of course, learning everything about him they could in the few days available to them before they'd have to move. It was this part of working that Taliesen always enjoyed the most; _learning_ his prey, stalking it, until the moment he knew how and where was the best place to kill it.

* * *

Taliesen carefully made another note in his private shorthand, and then glanced over at Zevran. The elf was sitting with his back to the wall nearby, toying nervously with one of his daggers, tossing it from hand to hand. Taliesen hid a smile. He'd been starting to think his partner was almost disgustingly perfect, but that illusion had finally been shattered when they'd started observing their target; the elf clearly had no patience for the lengthy, cautious work involved in learning a target and formulating a plan. He'd been showing signs of frustration already by midway through the second day, and now, five days in, was visibly jittery. Odd... Taliesin was certain the elf would prove to be capable of endless patience one he was actually on the stalk, but the preparation needed for same... that, he apparently had little to no patience for at all.

"When are we going to kill this man?" Zevran growled, noticing his look. "We have less then two days left!"

"Tonight," Taliesen said calmly, and bent over his notes again.

"Tonight?" Zevran asked, stilling, the dagger disappearing from his hand with barely a flicker of his slender fingers.

"Yes," Taliesen said. "He should be visiting that whore of his again. We'll take him once she's left."

Zevran nodded, once. "Good," he said, and settled back more comfortably against the wall, the tension that had been in him for days draining away. A charming smile lit his face. "So... how will we get in?"

Taliesen glanced at him, then put aside his notes and carefully outlined his plan.

* * *

The elf was _good_ at following instructions, Taliesen noted, as the pair of them slipped silently through the shadows, ghosting across the roof of the building. They reached the point Taliesen had identified days before, and the elf slipped the coil of thin rope off his shoulder, quickly slipping into the harness at one end. Taliesen wrapped the free end around his own body, and braced himself, making no sound above a slightly deeper inhalation as the elf slipped over the edge, his weight pulling the line taunt.

For a moment all was silence, then he heard the faintest of creaks, and the rope slackened off. A single sharp tug. He released the rope, heard the quiet hiss of it spilling over the edge as Zevran drew it in. He knelt at the edge, looking over, fixing the location of the now-open window in his mind, then turned and crouched, back to the long drop behind him, hands gripping the edge of the roof. He kicked up, rising for a moment in a near-handstand on the very edge, then jack-knifed, hands pivoting around the edge, changing the direction of his fall from _out_ and _down_ to down and _in_. His aim was perfect, body knifing precisely through the dark rectangle of the window to land lightly on his feet on the floor inside, allowing his momentum to bring him into a crouch, fingers of his left hand just brushing the floor, right hand already hovering near a weapon hilt. He caught a gleam of teeth in the shadows nearby, Zevran grinning approval of his performance.

They remained there for a moment, both motionless, listening to see if the slight sounds of their entry had been noticed. Nothing. Silence. Then a reverberant snore from the next room. Taliesen felt a grin crossing his own face, as fierce as Zevran's, expressing his pleasure in a job well-done.

Not that it was _done_ , not yet – they still had a target to kill.

As silently as two ghosts, they moved to the door. Taliesen oiled the hinges, then nodded to the elf.

Zevran eased silently into the room, gliding to one side of the door, Taliesen following, stepping into the shadows on the other side. They paused again, eyeing their target.

He was sprawled on his back on the bed, silken sheets kicked aside, naked save for a corner of one sheet trailing down over his right thigh and knee. Fine tattoos covered his torso and arms in an elaborate filigree of swirling lines, incredibly detailed in the complexity of their shapes. He shifted slightly in his sleep, another short-lived snore escaping. The room reeked of sex, mingled with the scent of the perfumed candle burning low on the bedside table.

The two of them moved toward the bed, Zevran's pace quickening, Taliesen dropping back and watching his partner, interested to see him in at a kill. Marla had always liked to be the one to make the killing stoke, when it was knife-work involved; Taliesen much preferred less messy methods; poisons, or the garrote... especially the garrote...

Taliesen stopped, nerves abruptly prickling, eyes narrowing as he watched his partner. Something was... off. He wasn't sure what, at first. Zevran glided soundlessly toward the bed, silent as a hunting cat, as bonelessly graceful as a snake, sliding through shadows. The dim night candle by the bed flared briefly, gilding his skin, and Taliesen noticed abruptly how taunt he was, every muscle standing forth with a subtle tension; not enough to impede his motion, no, he flowed smoothly from position to position with a disturbing fluidity of motion, his eyes focused on his target with total concentration. He didn't seem aware of anything else in the room, just his target, and the closing distance between.

_Death_ , whispered Taliesen's nerves. He could feel the hairs on his body rising like the hackles on a dog, _knowing_ he was in the presence of something deathly dangerous and totally amoral. In that moment, he feared the elf, and hated himself for that fear.

Zevran struck so fast Taliesin never could have said afterwards just where he'd produced the dagger from, or what motions he'd made in that final lunge; it seemed like one moment he was near the bed, hands empty, focused entirely on his prey, and the next he was on the bed, left leg kneeling on the man's thighs, pinning them down, right hand locked over his mouth and nose to stifle any noise he might make, his weight pressing the man's head back into the cushions, left hand holding a dagger buried to the hilt in the stomach, angled up under the ribs to pierce his heart.

The man's eyes had flown open. He heaved, once, twice, a faint sound escaping past the muffling hand as he tried to scream, and then shuddered and went lax in death, the stink of loosening bowels and urine joining the other smells in the room.

Taliesen swallowed nervously, watching the elf. Zevran stayed where he was, crouched over his victim, for a long, long moment, hand clasped around the dagger's hilt so tightly his knuckles were white, then finally, slowly, eased himself back, releasing the dagger, sinking into a crouch at the foot of the bed, and remained there, motionless. Taliesen bit his lip, remembering his fear of the elf before he'd struck, disturbed and _angered_ to realized he still felt it.

"Zevran," he called, voice harsher then he'd intended.

The elf jumped like a startled cat, shooting almost straight up, twisting to land facing Taliesen, then launched himself in a flat trajectory at the man that drove him back against the wall, back of his head impacting solidly against the wall. For a moment his vision was darkness and sparkles. He was surprised, when it cleared, to find himself still alive, held pinned against the wall by the elf.

Zevran was staring at him – no, _through_ him, as if he wasn't even there, eyes hugely, unnaturally dilated, just the narrowest paring of colour still visible around the black, black pupils. He was breathing rapidly and shallowly, body pressed tight against body, so close Taliesen could feel the strange clammy dampness of his skin, so unnaturally cool.

"Zevran," Taliesen said again, shakily, beginning to wonder if perhaps the elf was a user of something after all.

At the sound of his voice, the elf made a low growling noise, pressed closer, groin grinding against groin. Taliesen made a strangled sound of his own as he felt his body reacting to the insistent friction. Angrily he pushed at the elf, trying to pry himself loose. He had an advantage in size and strength, though only a small one, not to mention the advantage of being in his right mind, which Zevran clearly wasn't at the moment. The struggle excited him, reminding him forcibly of some of his more satisfying kills. By the time he finally had the elf pinned, he was feeling rather distinctly short of breath himself.

"Damn it, elf... snap out of it," he growled. Zevran's only response was a convulsive jerk of his hips. Taliesen scowled, feeling his anger rising dangerously; it had been a perfect kill, a _beautiful_ kill, and now if he couldn't get the elf calmed down and out of here it was all going to be spoiled. At least he had some time to spare before their departure became urgent; it would be some hours yet until morning, until the merchant would normally rise from his bed and summon a servant.

He knotted one hand in Zevran's hair, gave his head a rough shake. Nothing. His hand tightened in anger, hairs pulling loose from the elf's scalp from the force of his grip. Zevran made an odd, hoarse sound, hips jerking upwards again. His skin wasn't cool and clammy any more, but dry, heated. Taliesen hissed angrily, now painfully erect himself, then mashed his mouth against the elf's, an angry kiss, a kiss of frustration more then one of lust. Zevran's mouth opened in a moan, and he thrust his tongue in, matching the motion with a grind of his hips.

His dislike of the elf, his momentary fear, his anger, his excitement, their struggle... it woke something in him. Something dark, something cruel. He bit savagely at the elf's lips, maintaining his grip in Zevran's hair while he rocked a little to one side, free hand stroking down the elf's side, and then sliding up under the edge of Zevran's leathers, fingernails digging suddenly into the soft skin of his belly, raking angrily _down_. The force with which Zevran's body arched in response almost threw him off, a hoarse whimper breaking from the elf's throat.

They struggled together on the ground, both of them bucking and grunting, Taliesen's hands exploring what bits of the elf he could reach with ruthless cruelty, Zevran's muffled cries of pleasure driving all thought from his head but his _need_. When he came, it was with an aching force that made everything white out for a moment. He was aware of Zevran's hoarse cry sounding in his ear even as his teeth closed with bruising force on the elf's shoulder to muffle his own.

Vision returned. He was sprawled over the elf, straddling his leg, his own thigh pressed tightly into the elf's groin. Zevran's hips were still twitching slightly, his eyes tightly closed, head thrown back. With a hiss of disgust Taliesin pushed himself up on hands and knees, moved away from the elf, grimacing at the sensation of warm damp stickiness inside his leathers.

Zevran's eyes opened. His pupils had returned to their normal size; he looked dazed, but otherwise fine. "What..." he muttered.

"Get up," Taliesen growled at him.

Zevran rose shakily to his feet, blinking owlishly at Taliesen.

"Get your dagger – we need to go. _Now_ ," he snapped. He watched as Zevran walked over to the bed, wavering at first but moving with almost his normal grace within a few strides. Zevran stood looking down at the corpse for a long moment, then removed his dagger, fastidiously cleaning it on the sheets before sheathing it, staring in apparent fascination at the body the whole time. He shivered, once, then bent down, one hand reaching out to touch the dead man's hair – no, Taliesen corrected as he saw the sparkling object in Zevran's hand, to pick up something.

"What's that?" he asked.

"An earring," Zevran said, voice cool and remote. "It's too beautiful to leave behind."

He held it up, giving Taliesen a glimpse of it – some silver-coloured metal twisted into a flowing, organic shape, set with tiny glittering black shards, a purple tear-shaped stone hanging pendant from it.

Taliesen scowled. "I hope you're not planning to _wear_ that," he growled. "It's far too unique; someone might recognize it."

"No," Zevran said. "I just... want it. To remind me," he said, and slipped it into one of his belt pouches.

"Let's go," Taliesen said brusquely, turning to lead the way out.

"Taliesen... about what just hap..."

"Shut up," Taliesen interrupted him, turned to glare fiercely at him. "I don't want to talk about it. _Ever_."

Zevran looked away, then nodded, seeming to shrink in on himself.

Taliesen quickly rigged up the rope so they could lower themselves from the window they'd entered by. A practised flick of the wrist sent a single ripple of motion snapping up the rope, popping the grapple on the end free of the sill. Taliesen caught it before it could hit ground, then coiled the rope as they moved away, Zevran following him, a silent shadow.

He hated the memory of what he'd just done. Hated the dark part of himself that he'd never had to acknowledge before, hated even the memory of the feelings the elf had stirred in him. And yet... part of him wanted to do it again. Wanted to do _more_. And worst of all, some part of him was sickly certain that he'd have the chance, the very next time Zevran killed. And _craved_ it.


	4. A Misstep

Taliesen stretched and yawned. "All right. I think we should be ready to move on her within another day or two at most. I'm looking forward to it," he added, smile going dark and cruel.

Zevran nodded, and slipped into the seat near the window as Taliesen vacated it. It was still warm from the other man's body heat, a not entirely unpleasant sensation. "I, too, am looking forward to it," he said.

Taliesen made no answer. He glanced up, and found the man's eyes resting on him, a brooding look, his eyes half-lidded. He hid a shiver as their eyes met, remembering the aftermath of his previous kill. Then Taliesen turned and walked away, without a word.

Zevran turned around and settled comfortably in the well-padded chair, keeping an eye on their target's home. They had her daily routine very well figured out by now; it just remained for Taliesen to decide a time and place for them to intersect with the mage, and then she would die. His own eyes narrowed in anticipated pleasure, hands closing tightly on the worn velvet arms of the chair, stroking slowly over the fabric in a sensual enjoyment of the feel of the soft nap of the fabric against his palms.

They never spoke of what had happened that night; never referred to it in any way. But the knowledge of it was still there, between Taliesen and he, of the darkness it had stirred in both of them, and the carefully unacknowledged desire they both felt for a repeat of that memorable night.

He'd... never _enjoyed_ a kill that way before. He'd caused death before, of course, in training – sometimes accidental, sometimes quite carefully planned, it was part of the making of a Crow – but he'd never before experienced such an overwhelming feeling of _power_ at the death of another living being. Such an intense enjoyment of the end of another's life, an enjoyment so strong it _demanded_ physical satiation as well. Part of him knew that such exquisite pleasure over the death of another being was _warped_ , was wrong, and part of him _revelled_ in it. He was as the Crows had made him – a weapon of death. A weapon that _craved_ the killing.

He shivered again, remembering Taliesen's response to his sudden lust. The darkness and cruelty and _wantoness_ buried under the human's normally cold exterior. Shifted uncomfortably in his chair as his body responded to his memories of that night, a deep-seated warmth flooding through his groin at the memory of being pinned down by his partner, of rough hands on his skin and an urgent tongue invading his mouth, of a strong body grinding itself against his...

He balled his hands into fists, hissing curses to himself as he forced his mind back to the task at hand, forced his body to calm itself. Watch the house, he reminded himself. Keep notes over everything he saw. It was the sort of tedious work he hated most, but it had to be done, and done well, so that they knew their target well enough to take her out easily. Well enough, they hoped, to make her death seem accidental, rather then deliberate; they were due a sizable bonus if there was no proof that she'd been killed by the Crows.

His breathing calmed. His body stilled. He sat, and watched, and waited.

* * *

It was some time after midnight when a faint creaking sound roused Zevran from his contemplation of the shadowed view outside. He eased closer to the window, peering out but being careful to remain unseen himself. At first he didn't understand what he was hearing, then saw the darker area of blackness appearing in the gated archway across the street. A heavy wooden door, set within the larger door that was one-half of the gates blocking the archway, opening as silently as old well-oiled hinges allowed. A form slipped out; a second one; a third. The ones in front and back had the alert grace he associated with professional guards; the one in the middle, slightly shorter, must be who they guarded. She was swathed in layers of clothing and heavy veils that made her look dumpy and twice her age, but her lithe walk gave her away; he'd studied it too much in recent days to be fooled by a few extra layers of cloth. The mage. Their target.

There was only one explanation for her slipping out so quietly in disguise in the middle of the night. Something, or someone, must have tipped her off that she was being hunted, and she was seeking to escape the city before she ended up dead.

Zevran rose to his feet, muttering a curse under his breath. He quickly scrawled a note at the end of the neat list of observations he'd made over the course of the evening, then hurriedly slipped out of the building, ghosting along in the wake of the mage and her escort.

They didn't go far, just a few streets over, to a livery stable. A closed carriage was waiting for the woman, a coachman already settling into his seat at the front, a stable boy standing nearby with two more horses. Zevran cursed again as one of the guards handed her into the carriage. She leaned out the window for a moment, seemingly talking to the driver, while the two guards mounted up and fell in behind the coach, then she disappeared back inside. The coachman picked up his reins, and they moved out.

Zevran flitted across the street in their wake, darting into the stable yard. He managed to catch up to the stable boy at the door to the stable. The boy yelped and flinched away from him, frightened, but calmed when Zevran held up some silver coins.

"The coach. Where is it going? Did you hear?" Zevran asked sharply.

The boy looked warily back and forth from his face to the coins, then abruptly held out his hand. "Bastion," he said.

Zevran cursed, then produced another coin – a gold sovereign – and held it up. "A horse. A good one," he demanded. "And this is yours."

The stable boy's eyes widened, and he nodded, then darted into the stables, returning a few minutes later at a run, a tall grey-speckled mare in his wake, head up and nostrils flaring, eyes wide, hoofs almost dancing as the horse set them down and snatched them up again. Zevran bit back an exclamation at the fineness of the horse; someone's valuable saddle horse, if he had to guess. "Won't she be missed?" he asked sharply.

The stable boy grinned. "A second coin will see to that – I know her owner, he is fallen on hard times and was fearing he would have to sell her away. If a night or two of adventure lets him keep her longer..." he shrugged.

Zevran laughed, and tossed the boy two gold sovereigns, before climbing into the saddle. The mare responded beautifully to the reins, clattering out of the stable yard and turning south to follow the route the carriage had taken.

He was on the outskirts of the city before he thought of Taliesen again. Reining the horse to a stop, he looked around, quickly spotting one of the ubiquitous street urchins and whistled for the child's attention. The child – boy or girl, he wasn't sure, the urchin was too young for the difference to really be noticeable yet – trotted over and looked expectantly up at him, maintaining a wary distance. "Yes, master?"

"I need a message carried. I'll pay you ten silvers, and the man the message is for will pay you ten more."

"Yes, master!"

"Go to the Golden Dancer. There is an outside stair, to the left as you face the door. Knock there, hard, you will need to wake the man, then say that the bird has flown her nest, and that the elf follows, to Bastion. Here are your coins – now, go, run!"

The child nodded and ran off, bare feet flashing as it disappeared into the darkness, hurrying in the right direction, Zevran was relieved to see. Still no guarantee that his message would actually reach Taliesen, but at least he'd made the effort. He lightly set heels to mare again, and headed out of the city, straining his eyes for a glimpse of the carriage, hoping the stable boy had been correct about its destination.

* * *

Taliesen cursed as he rolled out of bed and stumbled down the hallway to the main room. Who was pounding on his door at this time of night, and why? A look out the peep hole showed a young raggedly-dressed child, pounding on the door with both fists to make enough noise to rouse him.

He yanked the door open. "What is it?" he barked.

The child flinched, then drew itself – herself, he thought – upright. "I am to tell you that the bird has flown, and the elf follows, and you will pay me ten silver."

"Follows? Follows to where?" he snapped, already digging in the bowl near the door for some coins for the messenger. The child bit her lip, and shook her head, looking pointedly at the coins in his hand. He snorted, and held them out.

"To Bastion," she said as she snatched them, then turned and ran off down the stairs and away. Taliesen cursed as he closed the door, hurrying back to his room to change. That ruined his carefully laid plans; they would have to either improvise an ambush of the mage on the way there, assuming he could even catch up with Zevran and their target, or follow behind, and hope to catch her unawares once she thought she was somewhere safe.

He dressed hurriedly, equipping his usual array of weapons and tools, then threw together a small travel bag with changes of clothing for both himself and the elf, and an adequate supply of money – no telling how long they'd be on the road, with their target on the move as she apparently was.

He hurried out, heading for the nearest stables, hoping it wouldn't take him too long to rent a good horse and join the hunt.

* * *

He was walking the mare, letting her rest a little, when he rounded a curve and spotted the carriage ahead of him. To his surprise it was pulled to one side of the coast road, the woman, guards and driver standing in a cluster around it. He eased back around the curve, loosely tied the mare's reins to a handy bush, and snuck forward, watching his footing carefully, wishing it was nice hard cobblestones and not twig- and leaf-littered ground he was having to cross.

As he drew closer he could see what they were doing; reseating one of the wheels on its axle, the two guardsmen grunting with effort as they wrestled it into place, the driver guiding their work and standing ready to knock in the cotter pin that would hold it in place.

Even as Zevran drew close, the man drove in the pin with a practised knock of a mallet, then turned and bowed to the mage. "Sorry, m'lady, I should have checked the condition of the carriage more closely before we set out," he apologized.

She sniffed and nodded. "Check it now, before we continue," she ordered sharply. "I would rather not have another such delay after we resume our journey."

He nodded subserviently, and began circling the carriage, checking the other wheels. The mage walked across the road and stood staring downhill in the darkness, toward the moonlit waters of Rialto Bay.

The two guardsmen put their heads together, talking quietly for a moment, then one turned and walked into the bushes, passing within a couple of feet of Zevran as he sought out a convenient tree. A human, but a short one, not much taller then Zevran himself was. Zevran grinned, and followed him. He waited until the man had finished his business before coshing him over the head – having style counted in these little matters, he always thought – then quickly stripped off the guard's voluminous hooded cloak and wrapped it around himself, and strode back confidently, headed for the second guard.

The man wasn't expecting any danger out here, and only saw what he expected to see, his partner returning – Zevran was in striking range before the man realized there was something off about him. Zevran leapt forward, clamping a hand over his mouth even as he stuck a knife into him. He quickly backed off, dragging the dying man with him, dropping the body in the bushes and hurriedly returning to the road.

The mage was still looking out of the bay, the driver out of sight behind the carriage. Zevran grinned, feeling a surge of anticipation as he walked soft-footedly up behind the woman, silently drawing his favourite dagger. He'd killed that one guardsman too suddenly, too fast to have any real pleasure in it, but walking up behind the oblivious woman, dagger in hand, he felt a warm anticipation coiling through him. His vision narrowed, so all he saw was _her_ , the shape of her, the posture, knew exactly how he'd reach forward, up over her shoulder, and cut that smooth, white throat before she even knew he was there... he drew a final silent breath, hand already rising for the killing caress of blade across throat...

A scuff on the road behind him was his only warning before something crashed into his head with shattering force, sending him down into darkness.

* * *

He was surprised to wake up. The usual outcome of a Crow being discovered and captured was the death of the Crow; usually as immediately as could be arranged. To be captured and then allowed to wake – his target was either exceptionally stupid, or exceptionally self-confident – or both.

He kept his eyes closed, his breathing slow and even, trying to evaluate his situation as much as he could before his captors realized he had roused. He could tell he was stripped down to his smallclothes, hands bound together over his head, seated upright with ankles also bound, but widespread. By the jolting movements that were throwing him around, he must be in the coach. A careful sniff brought him the smells of road dust, old leather, sweat, a hint of delicate perfume and female flesh. He noticed his head, which should have been aching abominably from the blow that had knocked him out, felt fine – the mage, he decided. She must have used healing arts on him.

"You might as well open your eyes," a warm, rich husky voice drawled, sounding coolly amused. "I can tell you're awake."

So he did. He was, indeed, in the coach, tied in place on the rear-facing bench. The mage lounged on the opposite bench, her enveloping disguise discarded around her, a nest of richly coloured and textured fabrics. She was a beauty, with dark golden skin, eyes a brown so dark they seemed nearly black, masses of rich brown hair cascading in an artful tumble of curls to the small of her back, held back from her face by a pair of golden combs. She was dressed as casually as if she was lounging in her own chambers, rather then on a furtive nighttime flight from the city; a sheer dress of cream-coloured muslin fabric that clung to her voluptuous curves, revealing almost as much as it hid. The corner of her mouth quirked, and she drew a deep breath, subtly changed her posture, back curving, _displaying_ herself before his appreciative gaze. A necklace of fine gold chains set with milky white moonstones shifted with her movement, the slide of the loops across her skin drawing the eyes to the smooth curves of her bosom, barely confined by the plunging neckline of the dress.

He swallowed, feeling himself respond to her presence, her beauty, his own rather intriguing situation. He licked his lips, running his eyes over her in a frankly admiring way.

Really, it was a pity that such a lovely creature had to die. But even as he admired her, and one part of his mind idly imagined what carnal delights such perfection might offer, a second part of him was coldly evaluating their relative positions, running through a mental inventory of what weapons – granted quite limited in number at the moment – might still be left on him when he was as thoroughly stripped as he currently was.

She smiled at him, a warm, delighted, and above all pleased smile. "My remaining guard was quite wroth with me for not killing you immediately, once he woke up. The driver was all for finishing you off right away as well, seeing as his first blow with that dreadful mallet of his hadn't quite killed you. But you're too beautiful to kill so quickly, you know," she continued. "Not when I have a long, boring coach ride still ahead of me," she purred, eyes lighting up with an anticipatory gleam. "I decided I might as well amuse myself with you first."

"Oh?" Zevran said, raising an eyebrow at her. "And what do you plan to do with me once you are sufficiently... amused?"

She shrugged, smiled wickedly. "Kill you, of course. You're a Crow; it is the only way."

He nodded. "Of course," he agreed dryly.

She settled back comfortably in her seat, then stretched out one long leg, until her bare foot touched the inside of his right leg, just above the ankle. She smiled pleasantly, wiggled her toes, then began moving her leg so that her foot made a gentle up and down stroking motion along his leg, working its way a little more up then down on each pass.

Her smile deepened. "Just so you know, you've been _very_ thoroughly searched already. It was quite astonishing, the variety of deadly little odds and ends my guardsman found on you even after you'd been stripped down to your current state," she said, then licked her lips, grin widening. "I believe he quite _enjoyed_ searching you so very _intimately_ , you know," she said, voice dropping to a low, husky murmur. "Maybe I should allow him to enjoy your charms as well, before killing you."

Zevran swallowed. Her foot had made it all the way up to his inner thigh now, and the kneading pressure of her toes so close to his favourite body part in combination with the husky tone of her words was causing an inevitable reaction. Her foot moved, turned, the sole of her foot pressing warm and firm against his erection. He couldn't keep back a hiss of reaction as she stroked her foot up and down, the silken fabric of his smallclothes sliding exquisitely against his sensitized skin.

She grinned widely, then withdrew her foot, and curled up in her nest of clothes again, eyes narrowing in thought. She shook her head after a moment. "Even tied up and naked, I have a nasty feeling you could still find a way to kill me," she said darkly. "I'll have to... take steps," she said, and raised her right hand, magical energies gathering around it, a dark fog that enveloped her hand then stretched in languid threads toward him, wrapping his limbs, holding him motionless. She smiled cruelly, clenched her hand just slightly, and he gasped in pain as the magical bonds tightened sharply. "Just so you know," she whispered. "I could kill you with this... slowly, crushing the life out of you..."

Her lids slid half shut, and she slowly, almost dreamily rose to her feet, licking her lips as she stepped closer, her left hand reaching out to brace herself against the motion of the carriage, right hand carefully held out and to one side. She moved her fingers in a slow, curling wave, drawing a second pained gasp from him, then leaned down, right hand snaking out to grasp his throat, resting tightly against the line of his jaw. Her eyes narrowed even further, and he felt his mouth gaping open, muscles going lax as the dark energies wreathing her hand numbed them, taking them out of his control.

She leaned down, lightly kissing him, lips and tongue lightly brushing the curve of his open mouth, then covering it, her tongue darting in, invading his mouth, probing and curling around. It would, he supposed, have been deeply erotic if he'd had any ability to do anything in return, but as it was he couldn't even move his own tongue. The helplessness had its own eroticism, of course, bringing back memories as it did of his painful training in Master Edelbach's dungeon. He'd been entirely helpless there, too, of course, or so his tormentors had thought...

She leaned back, a displeased frown crossing her face, apparently having found the kiss as unsatisfactory as he did. For a moment he hoped she'd make a mistake and free his jaw while her own creamy throat was so tantalizingly near, but she was too wary, backing off again before letting his control of his own mouth return. A pity... while tearing out throats was not his preferred method of making a kill, it would have been one way to succeed in his mission before she could kill him.

She leaned over her discarded nest of clothing, reached down, and turned back with a length of cloth in hand. No, two lengths of cloth, one of which she was crumpling into a ball even as she returned to his side. He had time to spit a single low curse, then she had him frozen again, and was grinning in delight as she open his mouth and stuffed it with the silken fabric, using the second length to tie it in place, very effectively removing the last real weapon left in his nearly non-existent arsenal.

"There," she said, voice a satisfied purr as she stepped back. She dismissed her magic, returning control of his limbs to him. "A pity that I can't enjoy you more thoroughly, but one thing I've heard about Crows is to never trust them with anything sharp... even their own teeth."

He snorted, glaring at her, which appeared to delight her even further rather then displeasing her. She smiled prettily at him, then hitched up her dress, baring a delightful length of leg before lowering herself to straddle his outspread legs, setting her hands lightly on his shoulders. She leaned forward, her masses of sweet-smelling hair spreading like a cloak around them, wispy ends tickling against his sides, then began running her hands across his skin in slow, teasing strokes, one hand exploring the muscles of his upraised arm while the other slid down between them, across his chest, and lower yet, coming to rest on his stomach, fingertips toying with the dusting of golden hairs leading down under the hem of his smallclothes. The coach lurched as one wheel climbed over some small obstacle, and she was momentarily thrown forward, muslin-clad breasts rubbing deliciously against his chest, the hardened buds of her nipples noticeable even through the restraining fabric, her hand slipping even lower down as she braced herself against the unexpected movement His hips jerked, his body responding to her weight and scent and touch.

She laughed, the gust of her breath like a warm touch on his throat, then sat back, a smug look on her face. She shook her hair back, then lifted both hands, pushing it even further back, slipping her hands under the mass of it to fumbled with something at the nape of her neck.

"We're going to have so much _fun_ ," she purred, and released some fastening, the bodice of her dress slithering loose to pool around her waist, her large firm breasts freed to his greedy view.

Well. He might as well surrender to the inevitable, he supposed. And hope that his message had reached Taliesen, and that Taliesen would reach _him_ before she tired of amusing herself and killed him. Best he seek to be as amusing as he could be, then, at least as much as was possible within his currently rather restricted range of options.

He did his best to smile around the gag, lowering his lids to look at her through trailing eyelashes, and gave a tiny, suggestive thrust with his hips. She laughed again, then an unsettlingly predatory smile crossed her face, before she leaned forward again, beginning to kiss her way down the line of his throat, one hand once again slipping lower to tease and torment him.

* * *

Taliesen had been certain the very fine speckled grey mare he found along the side of the road must be connected to Zevran, and even more so when just around the curve from where he'd found it, he found clear signs of a coach having been pulled over. He quickly stopped the horses, and cast around for any clues as to just what had happened here. There was distressingly little he could make out, at least until his nose led him to the body hidden in the bushes off the road. A guard, judging by the armour and weapons, and dead – a single thrust to the heart. Zevran's work, at a guess.

He returned to the road, chancing lighting a lantern for long enough to examine the dusty dirt surface a little more closely. A pair of small footprints at one side of the road, facing the bay... worn around the edges and deep, as if someone had stood here for a while, their shifting weight deepening and blurring the prints. Drag marks, from behind those prints over to where the coach had been, a few dark drops and smears of blood indicating that whatever, whoever had been dragged had been injured.

He cursed, then mounted and set out again. At least he'd be able to maintain a good speed, now that he had a remount and could switch off regularly, keeping both animals reasonably fresh. He should be able to make better time then any coach, especially since at some point it would have to stop to either rest or change horses, and as far as his admittedly poor memory of the coast road went – he'd only ever been this way twice before – there wasn't a place where they could change horses anywhere within the next few hours ride.

He dug his heels in against the horse's flanks, urging it to greater speed.


	5. Accidents Happen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is pretty dark and twisted. I blame Taliesen. Talisen-in-my-head is _NOT_ a nice person at all, and the mage is no prize either. Now excuse me while I go hide my head under a pillow for a while...

Zevran hung limply in his bonds, panting for breath as best he could when he could only breath through his nose. The mage had a nasty sense of humour, and some rather unusual tastes when bedding someone. If he survived this night – and that was still looking doubtful – he was going to have some rather interesting bruises and bite marks to hide away. He finally raised his head, glaring across the carriage at the mage, lounging again in her nest of discarded clothing. She laughed at the expression on his face.

"I should be more careful," she said, voice a husky whisper. "I almost broke you that time."

Zevran's eyes narrowed farther. Broke... no. She deluded herself if she thought she could break one such as he. Almost killed him, yes, certainly, but then killing was easy. As she would learn, if he could get even one hand free, one foot free, his _teeth_ free... he knew he was glaring at her, and didn't care. Let her see his hatred of her. She was hardly likely to believe protestations of love, if his mouth had been free to make them. He was a Crow, after all – the only thing he cared for was the kill.

She sat up, crossing those deliciously long legs of hers, and smiled at him. "I wonder what I should try next..." she purred.

The coach slowed, and a knock sounded on the wooden roof. She frowned, and rose, stepped to the window, lifted the edge of the shade. "Yes?" she called, annoyance at being disturbed at her fun evident in her voice.

"Sorry, m'lady – we'll have to stop soon, and rest the horses." the coachman called. "It will be an hour or two before we can proceed again."

"It might be a good time to get rid of your passenger," a second voice added, dourly.

"Well enough," she agreed, let fall the shade, and turned back to Zevran. "How sad. One final performance, I suppose, and then your _final_ performance."

He snorted. As drained as her most recent attack on him had left him – and that was the only way he could characterize it, there'd certainly been no love or tenderness involved in that violent interaction of their bodies – he doubted he'd be able to perform again so soon.

She laughed, low and sultry, and walked over. "I have advantages other women lack," she whispered, apparently having divined his thought. "My partner need never run out of stamina," she continued, and reached out, caressing his tattooed cheek, trailing her hand down his neck, stroking it across the expanse of his chest. He sucked in air as crackling energy suddenly surrounded her hand, a series of painful little shocks jumping from it to him as it dropped even lower, crossing the plane of his belly. He couldn't stop himself from flinching away from that touch, imaging how it would feel on certain overly sensitive places... she laughed again, a low, dark sound, even as the energy changed, the electric touch becoming a warm, healing glow instead, energy flooding into him. Closed that hand around him, slowly stroking it up and down, coaxing new life into tired parts.

He closed his eyes, giving himself up to the sensation. She was going to have her way with him again after all, it seemed. Ah well, there were worse ways to spend the moments before his death. In the hands of vengeful Crows being one he'd be quite happily to avoid.

* * *

Taliesen felt his teeth gritting in a fierce smile as he spotted the coach pulled off into a small field to one side of the road, the horses unhitched and grazing, the two men sitting by a small fire. He quickly reined to a stop, and turned off the road, leaving the horses in the bushes and slipping closer.

The two men were passing a flask back and forth, heads together, laughing in that particular way that meant they were most likely discussing something lurid. They never even noticed the shadow creeping up behind them, until Taliesen lunged forward, ruthlessly snapping the neck of the guard even as his booted heel lashed out to connect solidly with the temple of the coachman. The two men died having made barely a sound. Nevertheless, he froze for a moment, listening for any sign that the occupants of the carriage had heard anything. Nothing happened, save one of the horses raising its head briefly to look in his direction before resuming cropping at the grass.

Silently he crept over to the carriage. He scowled as he realized it was swaying back and forth with a gentle rocking motion, clear indication of just what sort of activity was taking place inside of it. If the elf was busy fucking their target instead of killing her, he was going to kill _him_.

Easing to his feet, he used the tip of his knife blade to silently raise the edge of the curtain a finger's width, squinting into the interior, dimly lit by a swaying lantern suspended from the middle of the ceiling.

The elf was indeed involved in the activity he'd thought, but by the look of it, it wasn't by his choice; not bound the way he was, nor with that pattern of marks so obvious on his body. His wrists were torn and bruised from the ropes binding them together above his head, eyes wide with fury as he glared at the woman riding him, mouth a snarl around the gag blocking his mouth. His throat was encircled by dark bruises, shoulders patterned with deep bite marks.

Taliesen had to suppressed a snort of amusement – even as the elf's hips bucked, he was twisting one foot back and forth, trying to free it from the ropes that bound it to one of the legs supporting the bench he was sprawled on. He was damned close to succeeding, too... whomever had tied him had left just the tiniest bit too much slack in the rope.

Nor was the elf oblivious to his surroundings... his eyes suddenly darted to the blind, widening as he spotted the gap, the barely visible blade tip. The snarl on his lips turned to a fierce grin, and he returned his gaze to the mage, pupils widening in anticipation of her coming death, hips driving even harder.

Taliesen felt his own loins tightening, both from the carnal scene before him, and his own anticipation. But how to accomplish it best... he knew he could just throw open the door, and cut the mage bitch's throat before she could untangle herself from her current amatory efforts, but that would lose them the bonus for making her death seem accidental. Not that making it seem an accident was going to be all that easy now, with her coachman and guards dead... but... hrmm... if he made it seem that the guards and coachman had fled after her death... that would be well enough...

He stood quietly, watching and waiting as she finished her current activities, enjoying watching her having her way with the elf as he waited patiently. Really, it was a pity she had to die; she was a very beautiful woman, and obviously a hot-blooded one as well. Finally she gave a cry and arched back, before collapsing forward, draping herself languorously over the exhausted elf. She reached up, patting at the side of his face. "Thank you for a wonderful night," she said, then slowly sat upright. "A pity it has to end so soon. But..." she shrugged, rose to her feet. "You're a Crow."

Zevran said nothing, just watched her, eyes flat and cold, pupils still dilated. Likely she thought it was from sexual arousal, but Taliesen knew better. The elf was in that strange place he went, when he was anticipating a kill – aroused by the anticipation of death, not by sex..

She turned, picking up a cloth and swiftly wiping down her sweaty body, then rapidly redressed herself. Behind her back, Zevran finally freed one foot, the blood from skin scraped raw with his efforts serving to ease it past the rope. His eyes flicked to the window, checking that Taliesen was still there, then back to the woman, his foot slowly easing back to the floor, resuming its position as if still bound.

The mage turned back to Zevran, opening her mouth to speak again. Taliesen yanked the door open, and as smoothly as if they'd practised it, Zevran _lunged_ , yanking himself up to hang from the ropes around his wrists while his single free leg struck out, connecting solidly with the mage's lower belly, driving her back and out the door. Taliesen's fingers tangled in her long hair as she tumbled past him, yanked. He heard the crackle of her neck bones snapping even as he released the handful. She landed limply on the ground, eyes wide in horror, unable to move, to speak, to do anything to repair her damaged body.

Taliesen bowed theatrically to her as she lay dying. "Compliments of the Crows," he husked, then turned his back on her and climbed into the carriage. He stood a moment, staring down at his helplessly bound partner, then smiled, a hungry smile, a predatory one.

"Beautiful," he whispered.


	6. Possession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This particular chapter never appeared in the ffnet version, but was only posted as a bonus chapter on the People of Thedas community on Dreamwidth. It was my first time writing explicit dub-con and I found it horrendously difficult to work on; I could only manage a few lines at a time and then had to go work on other stuff for a while. Now I look at it, and it's actually pretty tame overall.
> 
> Huge, huge kudos are due to scarylady, who encouraged me to grit my teeth and do it. :)

Taliesen bowed theatrically to the mage as she lay dying. "Compliments of the Crows," he husked, then turned his back on her and climbed into the carriage. He stood a moment, staring down at his helplessly bound partner, then smiled, a hungry smile, a predatory one.

"Beautiful," he whispered.

Zevran's eyes were still blown wide with killing-induced lust, and he shuddered at the sound of Taliesen's voice, body arching just slightly in his bonds. Taliesen pulled a knife from his belt, and leaned forward, sliding the tip of the blade between gag and skin almost caressingly before turning it to cut through the silky cloth. He stripped the cut length away, then carefully worked the second piece of fabric out of Zevran's mouth, discarding the wadded ball on the floor and claiming the elf's mouth for a heated kiss, plundering it with his own tongue. It was an oddly dry kiss, the cloth having absorbed the elf's saliva, leaving him with what had to be a painfully parched mouth. Taliesen lingered there, enjoying the feeling of the elf sucking and nibbling on his tongue, of Zevran's mouth re-hydrating as his saliva glands resumed working again.

He lightly touched his hands to Zevran's waist, sliding them slowly upwards, stopping to toy with his nipples for a moment, grinning ferally and finally breaking the extended kiss as the elf moaned softly, chest pressing forward against Taliesen's hands. He slid his hands higher, brushing across the flat planes of Zevran's chest, the angle of his collarbones, forced out in stark relief by the upright position of his arms. Gently, almost tenderly, he placed his hands around the elf's neck, over the dark bruises left by the mage. She must have half-killed the elf to leave such lurid marks. The thought excited him; he didn't dare try it himself – unlike the mage he can't heal Zevran if he really hurt him – but he did slowly tighten his grip, just enough for the elf to start panting, face flushing with trapped blood, before he finally released him.

Taliesen took out his knife again, and stooped down, cutting the ropes that still bound one of Zevran's feet to the uprights supporting the bench sheet. It put his face near the elf's groin. His grin deepened at the sight of Zevran's slowly growing erection; only minutes after servicing the mage bitch, and the elf was excited again. He breathed in deeply, was surprised at how savagely excited the scent of Zevran's male musk mixed with the woman's juices made him feel. He'd never felt at all jealous about Zevran's sex-partners before, but this one, who'd forced herself on the elf... this one, he hated with a pure passion. He felt a surge of possessiveness for the elf, a feeling that angered as much as aroused him. He felt intensely glad that she was already dead, glad that they'd killed her, that she couldn't toy with _his_ plaything any more.

He straightened up, and loosened his belt, then undid the flap of his trews, freeing his own well-developed erection. He reached down, lightly cupping his balls for a moment, then slowly stroked his hand up the underside of his shaft, shivering as he watched Zevran's dark eyes track the movement. He stepped closer, releasing himself to grasp the elf's head between his palms, thumbs pressing forcefully at the hinges of his jaw. "Open," he snarled.

The elf's mouth obediently gaped open, and Taliesen moved closer, frowning as he realized that the elf's seated position on the bench put Zevran's mouth at an uncomfortable height. He muttered a curse, raising himself on his toes slightly while shifting the position of his hands to push down on the elf's bloodied and bruised shoulders. He hissed in pleasure as Zevran strained forward and licked at him, delicately, little flickering laps like a cat licking up cream. He eased slowly forward, forcing his breath to steady to a slow, regular pace as Zevran's mouth gradually engulfed him, his own fingers tightening enough to add yet more bruises to the elf's shoulders. As one thumb pressed painfully against a deep bite mark over the elf's left collarbone, Zevran moaned in pleasure, mouth and throat opening to accept Taliesen's full length.

He paused like that for a moment, savouring the feel of the elf's hot mouth and throat encasing him, his tongue rippling against him. He drew a long, hissing breath, knowing he wouldn't be able to take this strained tip-toe position for long, not and thrust too, and he _definitely_ wanted to thrust. He started off slowly, giving the elf a chance to adjust, working up to a steady pumping motion that saw his cock retreating until just the tip was still inside Zevran's hotly working mouth before smoothly seating himself to his full depth again, the elf's face buried repeatedly in the dark curls around his base.

He soon felt the tightening that meant his climax was approaching, and forced himself to stop thrusting, pulling out just enough to slip his hand in between his groin and Zevran's lips, gripping himself tightly enough to deny himself his own climax. He stood like that, breath hissing through his teeth as he watched Zevran's eyes widen. The elf was effectively gagged and unable to breathe, Taliesen's tip still buried deep in his throat. Taliesen shifted his free hand, tightly knotting it in the long hair behind Zevran's head, so that the elf couldn't pull back. He shuddered with pleasure as he felt Zevran's throat begin to tremor, then convulse as the elf instinctively fought for breath. The feeling of it was... exquisite. He was panting deeply himself, fighting to maintain control, before he finally stepped back, freeing the elf to breathe.

Zevran hung limply in his bonds, chest heaving as he gasped for breath, his own erection bobbing in counterpoint to his panting. Taliesen stood and watched him, enjoying the sight, while he waited for the elf to recover sufficiently for the next stage. "Turn over," he ordered after a minute. "Kneel on the bench."

The elf was dazed – it took him a moment to understand the words, to begin moving. His usual grace was gone, his movements clumsy as he twisted himself around. The ropes around his wrists bit deeper into his flesh as he turned over, the rope torquing tightly against the metal fixture it was bound around.

Taliesen ran his hand down Zevran's sweating flank and briefly cupped one cheek on his rump, then tapped on his inner thighs. The elf obediently shifted his knees wider on the bench. A push on his shoulders tilted him further toward the wall of the carriage, then Taliesen moved forward, pressing the head of his engorged penis against Zevran's rear. He paused again, enjoying the tickling sensation of the shudders of mixed fear and lust that were coursing through the elf's body, then slowly began to press forward, maintaining an iron grip around his own base, his other hand again reaching up to entangle in Zevran's hair.

Lubricated by nothing more than sweat, saliva and his precum, it was a slow, tight, painful entrance for both of them. He had to stop and wait several times for the elf to relax enough that he could press in further. They were both gasping and swearing by the time he was fully seated. He released himself, and took hold of Zevran's hips, gripping tightly – tight enough to leave bruises to match the still darkening fingerprints on his shoulders. _His_ marks, to reclaim the elf, mark him as _his_ property, _his_ toy.

He began to move, little thrusts at first, but as close as he already was to finishing, that quickly escalated as the elf shuddered and cried out under him. So tight, so warm, so very, very _good_... he bellowed as he came, back arching, plunged right to the hilt into the throbbing heat, shuddering and jerking as he spurted repeatedly, seeing nothing but black and red darkness for a long moment. He sighed in pleasure, slowly straightening and relaxing, fingertips languidly stroking up and down Zevran's sides and stomach, teasingly close to the elf's own still-engorged penis, before he stepped back, letting himself slip free.

He liked how the elf looked now, even more then when they'd started, the marks of Taliesen's harsh possession of him already darkening, glistening liquid drooling out of him and down his inner thigh. He was jerking and straining, his own unfulfilled need driving him to thrust futilely at the air, seeking contact to finish himself off. Taliesen grinned, then drew his knife again, and unceremoniously cut Zevran's wrists free. His support gone, the elf dropped down, sliding right off the bench and landing in a whimpering heap on the floor, curling up fetally around his achingly rigid erection.

"You may finish yourself off," Taliesen said coldly as he put himself away. He refastened his own clothing, watching avidly as the elf reached desperately to give himself the few strokes necessary to bring himself to his own spurting conclusion, crying out hoarsely as his seed spattered across the worn floorboards of the carriage. He turned away as the elf lay limply on the floor, shattered and stunned, all energy spent. A quick search of the carriage turned up Zevran's clothing. Taliesen dropped the leather armour to the floor beside the elf's head, nudged the discarded fabric from the gag over beside the pile with one foot.

"Clean yourself up, dress, then start cleaning up in here," he ordered harshly. "Leave no traces of our presence. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Zevran husked, tiredly pushing himself up into a sitting position and reaching for the scraps of cloth, hands shaking from strain and exhaustion.

"Good. We leave as quickly as we can – we've already lingered here far too long."

He left the carriage, already considering how best to make it appear that the guard and driver had fled on horseback after the mage's seemingly accidental death. They'd earn their bonus yet, if he had any say in the matter.


	7. Weapon Care

"Other wrist," Taliesen said.

Zevran silently changed hands, letting his left hand drop into his lap, holding the right one out and resting it on the corner of the table. Taliesen scooped up a little more salve on his fingertips, and gently rubbed it into the abraded flesh of Zevran's wrist, then wrapped a strip of bandage around to protect the raw skin.

The elf, he noted, was actually being quiet for once; normally it seemed as if you couldn't shut him up short of a direct order or clubbing him over the head, except for when he was working. His adventure of the night before seemed to have left him unusually subdued. Perhaps it was because he'd come so close to being killed; perhaps it was just exhaustion.

It had taken them a while to clean up the carriage well enough that Taliesen was satisfied there was no evidence left as to just what the mage bitch had been up to in there, or at least with who. And then he'd done his best to make it took as if the guard and the driver had fled in a panic after she'd died, and he and Zevran had carted the bodies on horseback well away from the camp, hiding the trail as best they could in running water and over trackless rock before pitching them down a cliff into the bay. With luck they'd never be found, or if found, never identified.

The elf was in pretty rough shape by then; but mere pain and non-debilitating injury wouldn't impede someone who'd been through Edelbach's training, as Taliesen well knew. They'd ridden on, until they'd stumbled across this remote shepherd's hut. He'd had to help the elf down from the horse and half-carry him inside, much to his annoyance. It was almost enough to make him wish he hadn't indulged himself before freeing him. Almost.

"Foot," he said brusquely.

Zevran tried to raise his left foot as far as the table top, but couldn't quite make it, leg wavering to a stop half-way up. Taliesen caught him by the shin, then stripped off his boot, feeling the elf tense in discomfort as he drew it off. He frowned over the torn flesh; the friction of the boot while riding had prevented it from scabbing over, and Zevran's ankle and foot was liberally streaked and smeared with blood. He muttered a curse. "That will need washing," he declared, and rose to his feet, letting the foot drop back to the floor. He poked around, but couldn't find anything to carry water in, and had to settle for carrying several clothes outside and dipping them in a stream that passed near the hut, then hurrying back.

Zevran was sitting slumped in the chair, head back and eyes closed, though they opened and he looked around to see who it was as soon as Taliesen entered. Taliesen dropped the sopping clothes on the table, then sat down again, holding out his hand. Zevran lifted his foot again, and Taliesen cleaned it off, before salving and bandaging it as well.

"Bites next," he said. "Don't want those going septic."

Zevran nodded tiredly, and sat forward in the chair, reaching up and beginning to unfasten his armour. He got it undone, then had difficulty stripping it off, arms stiff and sore from being restrained for so long. Taliesen sighed and rose to his feet, roughly yanking the top free and tossing it aside, frowning at the marks all over Zevran's shoulders and torso. Bruises, scratches, bites... neither the mage nor he had been particularly gentle with the elf. He picked up another cloth and gently cleaned Zevran's skin, frown deepening as he saw that several of the bites were already looking reddened and inflamed. He wished he'd packed more in the way of healing supplies; he had just enough salve left to treat the worst of the bites, then he'd be out until they got back to Antiva City. He'd just have to hope the elf was up to riding again once he'd rested, that he wouldn't sicken. It would be both inconvenient and dangerous to have to go looking for a healer so close to where a mage had 'accidentally' died; the less reason the Circle had to question her death, the better for everyone. Not that he thought they'd put too much effort into investigating her death - the leaders of the Circle were pragmatic enough about these things that they'd likely be just as happy to ignore any but the most blatant of evidence that the Crows had been involved. But there was still no sense in leaving any particular evidence around that they'd ever even been in the area.

Besides, the nature of Zevran's injuries were... personally embarrassing. To the elf, and to him. Better if no one but they knew of what had really occurred in that carriage. He'd just have to continue looking after the elf himself, as needed. Really, it was no different then maintaining a weapon. And that's what Zevran was, after all – a weapon, one _he_ controlled. With that thought in mind, he found it easier to maintain his own disinterest as he finished stripping and tending the elf, and saw him to bed, wrapped in the one dusty blanket the hut had yielded, his clothing bundled under his head for a pillow.

He still didn't like the creature, but at least there were benefits to himself from their partnership.


	8. Leashes

Taliesen sat back silently in his favourite chair, watching Zevran pad barefoot in circles around the room. The elf was keeping up his usual nonstop chatter as he went, occasionally reaching out to run his fingertips along a surface, adjust the position of a knick-knack.

The common room had changed considerably in appearance over the year of their association. The elf had a liking for bright colours and patterns, a sensual enjoyment of textures; the dingy old couch that had previously occupied the middle of the room had been replaced by a fine chaise longue of fanciful Orlesian style, upholstered in leather of a rich dark brown, decorated with numerous colourful cushions that Zevran would periodically rearrange into a more pleasing nest around himself, by some process of selection apparent only to himself. Taliesen had never been sure if he was sorting them by colour, by texture, by comfort, some combination of all three, or some other arcane criteria. Mood, perhaps; one particularly large and soft cushion covered in dark red velvet with a wide goldwork band decorating the front always seemed to crop up when the elf was feeling frustrated by a lack of recent work. He would sit there and stroke the nap of the fabric as if he was petting a cat, running one finger repeatedly along the wire, beads and bullion of the goldwork, tracing the couched forms, a brooding look on his face.

Almost every surface in the room was upholstered, draped, or otherwise covered with a length of fabric that Zevran had liked enough to pick up – sometimes literally, he was a reasonably accomplished thief, after all. Those, like the cushions, suffered frequent re-arrangement, so that the length of soft brightly-coloured wool that was draped over the foot of the chaise one day might be trailing off a side-table a week later, trampled underfoot on the floor the week after that, then scrunched into a ball in one corner, only to be resurrected from the depths and cleaned and placed somewhere that Zevran could stroke its soft surface every time he walked by it.

Only Taliesen's corner remained free of the drift – he'd made it very clear to the elf that this one area was _his_ , and that there was to be no encroachment on it. His chair was still the same comfortable spot it had always been, worn from his use of it, the cushions conforming to his body alone. There was an invisible line on the floor that Zevran was careful never to cross, not even when cleaning.

The difference between the elf when he was on the hunt, and when he wasn't, never failed to both fascinate and irritate Taliesen. When they were moving in on a target, he was the perfect partner – silent, efficient, able to stay perfectly still and absolutely silent in even the most unlikely or uncomfortable of positions for hours if need be. Instantly responsive to any look, touch or spoken order from Taliesen – spoken orders being very rare, as the elf usually needed only the slightest of cues to understand what Taliesen wanted him to do. On the hunt, he was like a perfect weapon, an extension of Taliesen's own will.

If only he could stay like that all the time, Taliesen might almost be able to like him. But no – off the hunt, he seemed unable to stay still or silent. There were times when that was almost enjoyable, having someone else around whose ceaseless motion and inane chatter served to distract Taliesen at least briefly from his own thoughts, but mainly Taliesen tolerated it as he would the foibles of a particularly valuable pet or an indulged child.

The mere thought of that made the constant movement and talk of the elf abruptly change from soothing to annoying, as it so often did. "Shut up and sit down," Taliesen growled.

Zevran obeyed promptly, breaking off in mid-word and slinking to his seat like a whipped puppy, curling up with a cushion in his lap – not the red velvet one, Taliesen noticed, but instead one of blue-green shot silk embroidered in fine silver thread. Taliesen breathed out sharply through his nose, and settled back in his chair even further, watching the elf through hooded eyes.

Zevran stayed very still for a while, then when Taliesen said or did nothing further, slowly relaxed, uncoiling a little. Shifted around, wiggling into a more comfortable position in his nest of cushions. One hand started stroking the cushion, fingers idly tracing the swirling lines of the embroidery. Taliesen bit back a growl of annoyance at that. It was about as still as the elf could stay, short of a mission.

He found himself gazing at the curve of the elf's neck, the fine coppery-brown hair falling over his shoulder, wispy ends stirring as he breathed slowly in and out, back lit by the late afternoon sun spilling through the nearby window. Found himself remembering how it felt to bury his hands in that hair, to invade the elf's mouth, possessing him with lips and tongue... gritted his teeth and moved his eyes elsewhere, all too conscious of the sudden tightness and warmth in his groin.

He _would not_ touch the elf – not casually, anyway. He had made that decision after their second mission, knowing that the dangerous emotions Zevran raised in him were not something he could afford to indulge in. Not and retain control over both the elf and himself, not when they both craved it so much. Instead it remained the thing they never talked about, never referred to, never acknowledged. The _need_ they both had, once Zevran had killed, the dark cruel _intense_ passion that was punishment and reward for them both.

At least since the night with the mage they'd become more... _controlled_ , in their desire. Even when caught up in blind lust following a kill, Zevran retained just enough consciousness and self-control to follow Taliesen away, to somewhere safe, before they indulged in their carnal frenzy. Not like that first mission, where they'd rutted within feet of the still-cooling body of their victim, or the second, where a passing traveller could have stumbled across the scene of murder and debauchery at any moment.

Sourly, Talisen had to admit that, perversity aside, they had made a startling effective team over the past year. Planning had always been the area he was most gifted in; now that he'd had an opportunity to work with a partner who was equally gifted at actually carrying out his plans, he could see how his previous associates – even Marna – had been the weak straw that had failed him again and again. He and Zevran had risen much farther in a single year of effective teamwork then all his efforts of the previous decade had ever gained for him.

He wondered if old Edelbach knew that Zevran and he would fit together so well – his planning ability, the elf's responsiveness and skill... he wouldn't put it past the old bastard, especially when teaming the pair of them gave a substantial boost to someone who was clearly a favourite of Edelbach's, and their joint success added to the Master's own already fearsome reputation as a trainer of young Crows. Though he doubted that even Edelbach guessed at how well they fit together in other ways – if he did, it would imply a thoroughness of knowledge about his apprentices that was almost frightening in scope. No, the old man was canny, and twisty as a corkscrew, but even he couldn't know the kinks of his students' minds that well, surely.

He doubted Master Kerrel had the least suspicion, either, and that was all to the good; Kerrel had been right that Zevran needed a good 'falconer', someone to keep him leashed and only release his jesses for the kill, then call him back to the glove and reward him... but Taliesen knew now that together, he and Zevran were capable of rising high, very high indeed, even beyond the sort of minor mastership Kerrel had dangled like a lure before him. Their fortunes were now very much linked, the falconer as leashed as the falcon by the tie between them. There were worse ways to be leased though, and at least with _this_ partner he might finally have a chance at fulfilling some of his own long-held goals and dreams.

He'd have to walk carefully though; he didn't want some Master, jealous of hard-won prerogatives, deciding to deal with the two of them while they were still only a potential problem. No, best to seem... agreeable, to whatever plans Kerrel might have for the pair of them, to remain subservient in attitude, to lull suspicions any Masters might have that he'd allow ambition to influence him. To try and make the pair of them seem merely competent, not _brilliant_ , as he knew they could be.

Zevran had started picking apart the silver embroidery on the cushion, he noticed, a tangle of glinting threads spilling down the rich fabric. It was quite spoiled now; he wondered if the elf was even aware of what he'd done.

"Zevran."

"Yes?"

"We've had another offer of a job. A good one."

A feral grin lit the elf's face, and he tossed the pillow carelessly aside, sitting up straight and attentive. "I am listening."

Taliesen suppressed an answering grin of his own, in anticipation of their next hunt... and it's inevitable aftermath.


	9. A Visit to the Master

Master Edelbach paused the moment he stepped into his rooms, hands already reaching for weapons, then stopped, and laughed. "Zevran," he said, mildly.

The elf stepped from the shadows, teeth glinting in an amused grin. "One of these days I will succeed in surprising you with my presence."

"Be sure to remember to point out to someone that I am in need of burial, if you do, for I'll have to be dead for _that_ to happen," Edelbach said dryly.

Zevran laughed softly, then gave Edelbach a theatrical bow. "I shall remember to do so. This I swear."

Edelbach snorted, then moved the rest of the way into the room, closing the door behind him. "To what do I owe the honour of your company?" he asked. "Not that I am complaining, please note... I have missed you rather more then I thought I would."

Zevran smiled, looking pleased, then shrugged. "I found myself thinking how rarely I'd managed to visit you since I graduated, and thought it was past time to remedy the situation."

"Rarely? Try never," Edelbach said. "So, how _are_ you, my friend? Judging by what I've heard of the growing reputation Taliesen and yourself are already gaining, I take it your partnership is working out well?"

As he asked, he moved over to a seat near the unlit fireplace, gesturing for Zevran to join him. The elf followed, taking a moment to crouch down and light the fire before taking a seat himself.

As Edelbach watched him lighting the fire, he found himself thinking back to the first time he'd seen the elf. He's been looking over a group of raw recruits having their initial training – a long-standing practise of his, he liked to place bets with himself over which ones would or would not make it as far as serious training under masters like himself – and noticed the boy. It was not his appearance so much that caught Edelbach's eye – though even then the promise of his future beauty was evident in his adolescent features – but his demeanour and bearing. He'd stood quietly, confidently, listening and watching intently as their trainer described and demonstrated a particular series of moves the gathered children were to learn.

Then the trainer had moved slowly through the series, the children ordered to mimic his motions with their own wooden practise daggers. Some managed to follow along reasonably well, some clearly hadn't been paying proper attention, or were clumsy and fumbled the moves – the little elf, smallest of all the children in the room, moved with surprising grace and assurance and came the closest, of all Edelbach could see, to duplicating the required moves. And as they repeated the series over and over, he self-corrected with startling speed and was soon performing the series near-perfectly.

His intent look and apparent ability had stuck with Edelbach, and three years later, when the survivors of that intake were made available for apprenticeship, he had promptly bid on and won the boy for his own training program, sure that the elf had the potential to become a talented Crow.

"You are thinking about something," Zevran observed after taking his seat. "About me, I hope?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact," Edelbach told him, smiling warmly at the elf. "And you haven't answered my question."

Zevran smiled again, crossed his legs. "Yes, my partnership with Taliesen goes well," he said. "Very well indeed."

Edelbach raised an eyebrow. "You're sleeping with him? I didn't think his tastes ran that way," he observed.

Zevran grinned. "Neither, as I recall, did yours. But no, he and I are not lovers, if that is what you are thinking. We just have sex sometimes."

Edelbach laughed, smiled fondly at the elf. "That is one of the things I've missed about you," he said. "How easily you maintain the line between mere physical enjoyment and real involvement. I suppose it comes at least in part from being raised in a whorehouse – you _know_ that the two aren't necessarily linked, grew up knowing what some Crows only learn through painful personnel experience – sometimes lethally so."

Zevran leaned back in his chair, eyes half-hooded. "Do not think that there was no painful personnel experience involved in my acquisition of the knowledge," he said softly. "Though I certainly never derived enjoyment from it at the time, nor mistook it for... as you say, 'involvement'. You know, I give thanks daily that the Crows purchased me; if they had not, I'd likely have ended up as some rich man's catamite long since. And then had my throat slit, or been sold back into the brothels, once my youthful beauty started to fade."

Edelbach nodded. He could hardly argue, not when he completely agreed with what Zevran's likely fate would have been, outside of the Crows. Even within the Crows, he might have met a similar usage, had he not come into Edelbach's own hands. He'd always preferred that himself and his trainers maintain a strictly hands-off approach with the apprentices; the training he gave them warped them more then enough, without adding abuse on top of that. The few times he had discovered one of his trainers taking advantage of his – or her – position, he'd personally made examples out of them. Except once.

"You are lost in thought again. Still about me, I hope? I would hate to think I have lost your regard so much that you would think of another when I am right here..."

"Yes and no," Edelbach admitted, frowning. "I was thinking of that trainer you killed."

Zevran went very still for a moment, then uncrossed his legs, curling up in the chair, arms around his legs. "Ah. _Him_. The man was an idiot."

They both fell silent for a moment, thinking of dark events several years past.

* * *

He'd known it would hurt. He'd known it would hurt even worse then anything that had been done to him before. Every muscle in arm and leg and torso felt on fire from the constant nearly unendurable tension, shaking sometimes with the exhausted need to _move_ , to escape the further torment being visited on him with sharp little knives and astringent liquids and long fine needles. He closed his eyes, maintained his silence, forced himself to not move, not make even a quiver of discomfort if he could help it.

A Crow must be able to ignore personal discomfort and remain motionless for hours on end if need be. A Crow must be able to continue their work even when real injury caused real agony. A Crow should be able to remain silent and still in hiding, and _not break cover_ even when their flesh was pierced by chance-cursed arrow or spear. That was the ideal, anyway; not all Crows could meet it. Those who couldn't usually died, or failed and were killed for their failure; the Crows _did not tolerate_ failure.

The best of the training masters, like their own Master Edelbach, would not pass a Crow who could not pass their own personally-devised system of training and testing in pain endurance. Edelbach's system was woven throughout all the long years of their training, starting off with simple exercises, such as remaining motionless in a particular position for some length of time. As time passed the positions became more difficult, the locations more dangerous, the discomfort of holding it worse, the length of time it must be held longer. And irritations were introduced, again starting with minor ones and progressing up the scale, from a single crawling beetle running over one's flesh to a swarm of stinging insects, and worse.

Those who failed were sometimes passed on to lesser training masters, sometimes killed, depending on how great their failure had been and how talented they were in other areeas. Sometimes the training itself killed them, when an apprentice turned out to have an allergy to some noxious insect or animal, or when a trainee flinched and ended up bleeding out and _dead_ rather then merely lightly injured. Zevran had seen both occur during the course of his own training; the one who had flinched had been a friend.

His own turn had been next. He'd ascended the wall, fitted himself into the high shadowed corner of the room, and stayed utterly motionless, not making a sound even when the carefully aimed arrow sunk into his leg. He remembered hanging there, limbs still pressed against the rough stone, watching his blood oozing down the shaft and dripping to the floor far below, adding to the spreading dark stain where apprentice blood had dripped for years, so gruesomely added to by his friend so shortly ago that the floor was still damp from the necessary clean up. He maintained his position, making the small rhythmic muscular flexations that kept cramping at bay, ignoring the burning agony in his leg, until the trainer finally nodded, and told him to descend. They'd pulled the smooth-headed arrow free, applied a poultice, and he'd been dismissed to go rest. He remembered the approving pat on his shoulder the trainer had given him, before turning to order the next in line up the wall.

So when _this_ trainer began taking liberties with his aching, helpless body, he easily managed to give no sign that he was even aware of what the man was doing. It was all too sickeningly familiar, reawakening years-old nightmares of helplessness in the hands of those who derived pleasure from what was only pain to him. It made him angry, in ways the more obvious torture didn't – he had _expected_ the other pain, tacitly agreed to it by surviving his training thus far. He turned his anger inwards, thinking furiously, knowing only that he _needed_ to kill this man for what he was doing. It was a _betrayal_ , not just of himself, but of Master Edelbach, and he knew what judgement the master would hand out to the trainer if he caught him at his little games; that, too, was legend in the apprentice dormitories, in the stories passed down orally from year to year. That whatever else they might face at the hands of Master and trainers, they did not have to fear sexual predation.

And that meant the man could not allow him to live, he realized with cold certainty. He would die in this training, in some way that made it appear that his death had been due to eithr accident or some failure on his part, not murder by the trainer. The trainer was a Crow – _of course_ he would know ways to do that, ways that would escape all but the most thorough of examinations. Apprentices failed in this penultimate stage of their training all the time, and it was as likely to be fatal as not.

In the end he'd decided there was only one way to accomplish his goal; to _seduce_ the man, trick him into a moment where he forgot caution, forgot that Zevran, too, was an assassin, even if only a fledgling one. Seduce him into recklessness, and hope he made a momentary error in judgement that gave Zevran a chance to kill him, or failing that, left evidence too obvious to hide on his body.

And so he'd begun to respond to the man's attentions, subtly at first, little motions that spoke of growing arousal, of _enjoyment_ of what the man was doing to him. He'd known the man would require more then mere acting before he'd feel belief, however. So he focused on himself, let erotic memories flow through his mind, remembering certain dreams, remembering moments of sexual play with his fellow apprentices, putting aside the pain he was in and focusing on memories of pleasure, until his body responded with an erection that ached in an entirely different way then his outstretched limbs and abused flesh did.

He felt the man's excited response to his own visible arousal, lured him on further by abandoning his silence and starting to make little gasps and bitten-back cries, as if he was caught in pleasure so great he could no longer stay silent. The man groaned and gasped, one hand playing with himself while he teased Zevran with fingers and teeth and tongue.

Zevran could feel his own skin heating, flushed with a confusing mix of shame at what he was doing, at what was being done to him, and pleasure from the same, the pleasure tangling with the pain, so that shame and pleasure and pain and arousal mixed and surged, as his body began to surge against the restraints, straining for a completion that seemed just out of reach. The man growled, fingers thrusting harder, mouth taking him even deeper in. Zevran flushed in even deeper shame as he cried out and came, pleasure-pain-pleasure so intense it seemed to white out the world for an aching moment.

"More," he whimpered, as the man's mouth lifted from his flesh. Writhed, at least as much as his bonds allowed, tightening purposefully on the man's fingers as he did so. " _Please!_ "

His tormentor rose to his feet, fingers slipping free, eyes dark with passion, other hand still stroking his own stiffly upright cock. Frowned down at Zevran. The way the elf was stretched out on the rack, there was no way the man could take him, not the way he now wished to.

Zevran moaned again, arched the little bit his taunt position permitted. " _Please_ ," he repeated, seeing the man's eyes widen further at his cry. Oh, yes, the bastard was certainly enjoying this – thinking him helplessly aroused and _begging_ for it. Concentrated on thoughts of pleasure again, so his own flagging flesh began to engorge a second time, hiding the hatred he felt for the man standing over him. He wanted him _dead_ for this, dead for making him feel this way, dead for making him enjoy his own humiliation. Because some dark part of him had awakened, and _was_ enjoying this, enjoying the helplessness and the pain and the humiliated pleasure. And he _hated_ that, hated learning this about himself, hated the man for teaching him.

The trainer moved, eyes looking half-drugged with pleasure as he slackened off the tension on the rack; not much, not enough to give Zevran any real freedom, just enough that there was enough looseness in the ropes that he could lift him a little, turning him over on his belly. The tension pulled Zevran's limbs to opposite corners, forcing his arms and ankles into crossed positions. The man swore softly when he realized that clamped Zevran's legs together, making him just as difficult to access as before. Unthinking, he set hand to wheel, lifted the pawl of the ratchet, meaning to slack off the ropes enough that he could spread the elf's legs.

It was as good a chance as any. Zevran abruptly curled tightly, yanking as much rope free as he could before the startled man released the pawl, freezing the roller in place. Before he could haul on the wheel and tighten the rope again Zevran pushed up and twisted, legs scything to the side, knocking him away.

He crouched on the rack, knowing he had only moments before the man would be on his feet again, moments in which to free himself enough to fight for his life. Curling up, he braced his feet against the cuff on his right wrist, kicked out, hissing softly as his thumb disjointed and skin was scraped raw, and the cuff flew free. He was repeating the action with the cuff on his left wrist even as the trainer lunged toward him.

The fight was viscous, both men fighting for life, both knowing their only chance was to kill the other. The trainer was, if anything, more desperate; even if he succeeded in killing the elf, he'd have to flee, and hope he could run far enough and fast enough to escape Edelbach's vengeance – there was no way, now, that he could make Zevran's death seem unremarkable. He closed in on him, pitting his greater knowledge and strength against the elf's speed and agility, feeling sure he'd win – the elf's legs were still bound to the rack, after all, restricting him in what he could do in return.

* * *

Edelbach looked up at the knock on his office door. "Yes?" he called. "Come in."

The door opened and Jirel, one of this chief trainers, leaned into the room, a worried frown on his face. "Master Edelbach, there's been an... _incident..._ in the dungeon. You need to come."

"Oh?" he said, putting aside his quill pen and rising to his feet. "What's happened?" he asked as he crossed the floor.

"It... appears that one of the apprentices has killed his trainer," Jirel said.

" _What!_ " Edelbach exclaimed, and hurried off toward the staircase, at as close to a run as he'd allow himself

Jirel rapidly guided him to correct room; it would have been easy to find, several other trainers were standing near the open door, looking pale. Edelbach paused in the doorway, looking over the blood-spattered scene within.

"We've disturbed nothing," Jirel told him, voice hushed. "We thought you should see, first."

Edelbach grunted acknowledgement, then picked his way across the floor, crouching down first by the dead trainer, frowning as he took in the man's unlaced breeches and battered condition. Right forearm badly broken, bone ends poking through torn flesh. Left arm dislocated at the shoulder. Ribs broken on the left side as well, a foot-shaped bruise dark on the flesh over them. Right ear half-torn from his head, deep teeth-marks visible in it, face bruised and broken.

He rose and walked over to the rack, looked down at the bruised, blood-streaked body hanging half off the table, fingertips brushing the floor, legs still tangled in the restraining ropes. "Who?" he asked.

"Zevran Arainai."

Edelbach blinked, frowned. Damnation. The elf had shown such promise... and then for _this_ to happen to him! He wished endless torment on the now-dead trainer.

He knelt, gently taking the elf's head in his hands and turning it to examine the battered features, confirm the identity. And froze, as he felt a slight breath against the skin on his wrist. "Summon a healer, _now_ ," he snapped. "The elf lives."


	10. An Emptied Man

"He will not scar?" Edelbach asked as he counted gold coins out into the priest's cupped hands. "You are certain?"

"I vow, with the help of our mage, he will heal from this with no scars," the priest promised. "I will return in an hour with the mage, and you shall see for yourself that the injuries are erased when she is done."

"Good," Master Edelbach said. "I will have the second half of the payment waiting for your return."

The priest nodded, bowed, and hurried off, dropping the coins into the pouch at his belt. His guards – a pair of minor Crows – followed him out.

Edelbach turned and walked over to the bed where Zevran lay, sleeping deeply from the draughts the priest had dosed him with. He'd thought that the elf would have to bear the scars of his vicious fight for survival, until the priest had delicately let it be known that the local chantry currently had on hand an experienced healer mage, whose services could be purchased. For a price, of course – a heavy one, more then Edelbach would normally have been willing to spend on a mere apprentice. Undoubtedly the priest assumed the elf was his lover, explaining his obvious concern over the young man's health and appearance, and the fact that he was in a room near Edelbach's own rather then in the apprentice dormitories.

But one of the many weapons in Zevran's arsenal was his beauty, and seeing it marred this way, especially given how surprising it was that the elf had won his desperate fight at all – no, he would spend the money, and consider it well spent. Only a handful of times in a Master's life might they ever find a pupil with this much potential; he would not see Zevran's wings clipped before he'd ever had a chance to really stretch them. He settled in a seat with a book on Qunari poisons he'd been meaning to read for a while, and passed the time reasonably pleasantly until the priest returned with an escort of templars and the healing mage, a wan, frightened-looking young woman.

She calmed when she was at her work, carefully working her way from the elf's lacerated ankles up his body, healing as she went, leaving pink new skin and faded yellow-green marks where before was torn flesh and black bruises. She loosened bandages to stroke slender fingers across deeper lacerations, hummed for a while over the broken bones in his left hand, over the thumb joints swollen from being dislocated and reset, setting his hands down gently when the swelling had receded. She finished with his head, smoothing her hands across his shattered nose and broken jaw, the deep scratches down the left side of his face, cupping one hand over the bite that had nearly severed the tip of his right ear. When she lifted her hands he was whole again, unmarred save for fading bruises, some lines and patches of pale new skin, and the very few scar marks he'd previously acquired in training.

Zevran's eyes opened, and he frowned a moment, looking at the young woman bent over him, then smiled warmly. "Surely I am in the afterlife, to wake with such a vision of loveliness before my eyes," he said, voice a low, throaty and very _suggestive_ purr. Edelbach bit back a laugh at how rapidly the mage backed off from her patient – and how red both she and the priest had turned. He quickly stepped forward, thanking the priest warmly for his help, and handing over the remainder of the payment for the mage's services. The priest bowed, pleased, and quickly made his farewell before turning and shepherding his templars and mage away.

Edelbach closed the door behind them, and turned to look at Zevran. The elf's eyes were wide, his expression just a little awed and surprised, as he examined the unmarked skin of his hands and arms, touched his undamaged face.

"How do you feel?" Edelbach asked as he moved back over to his chair and sat down, giving the elf an assessing look. Zevran sat up and crossed his legs, completely unconcerned with his current nudity.

"Surprisingly good, actually," Zevran said lightly. "Considering what shape I last remember being in."

Edelbach snorted, amused. "Enjoy it – it's the most expensive healing I have ever authorized for a mere apprentice."

He was pleased that the elf didn't look at all concerned or worried by his statement, merely a little thoughtful.

"So... tell me what happened," he said. "I can guess some of it, but I'd like to hear it in your own words, if I may."

"Of course," Zevran said, and gave a swift and concise rundown of events, as professionally as Edelbach could have hoped for from even a much more experienced Crow. He calmly described what had happened, his reasoning that the trainer would kill him to cover up his disobedience of Edelbach, and his decision that the man would have to die. His voice didn't even waver as he described exactly how he'd lulled the man, and every detail of the resultant fight, perfectly recalling every blow, bite, kick, and move, describing it well enough that Edelbach was nodding along, picturing the fight exactly in his head. And at the end he sat quietly, waiting while Edelbach considered his words, not seeking to fill in the silence.

"Well done," Edelbach said after a few minutes, allowing a little warmth to creep into his voice, noting how the elf sat just slightly straighter at his words. "What do you believe was your opponent's biggest mistake?"

"He was a _fool_ ," Zevran said, voice scathing. "He underestimated me – assumed that since I was only an untested apprentice, I was sexually ignorant and unskilled in seduction. He let his lust for me blind his judgement. I can only assume he was trained by a far lesser Master then you, or he would have been dead long since."

Edelbach let one of his rare real smiles show at that. "Yes, he was. Now, I am going to give you a day or two to rest and recover from all that happened to you over the last few days – your body is healed, but that will have drawn down your reserves even more then the fight and what went before it - and then I will be _personally_ overseeing redoing your pain training. Do you understand?"

Zevran nodded. "Yes, master."

"Good. You may go."

Zevran nodded and hopped off the bed, giving Edelbach a short bow before walking out of the room, still completely unselfconscious of his nudity.

* * *

The days of training came back to him sometimes, in dreams or nightmares. Pain, endless pain, sometimes a low background throb while they let him rest for a while, sometimes so intense he could no longer keep silent and screamed from it. He stayed silent as much as he could, though always, eventually, there would come the tears, or the screams. But never the begging... he _would not beg_ , no matter how far they pushed him. He would sooner die in their hands then demean himself that way.

And always Edelbach was there, usually sitting to the side and watching while the trainers – no, Zevran thought, say the real word, while the _torturers_ – did their work. And some times, when it became clear that they were unable to break the elf themselves, _he_ would come forward, and take over, dispassionately breaking down Zevran's walls, until the elf responded in one of the ways they needed.

He could always tell when it was the Master working on him, even when he was unable to see or hear or even smell who it was. He began to welcome feeling the touch of the man's lightly calloused fingers, the sense of the nearness of him, even as Edelbach caused him unendurable pain, because it meant the end of that particular session was near. Welcomed the Master's absolute detachment from what his hands were doing, the odd almost-gentleness it gave to those warm, sure hands even as they did unspeakable things to him.

Realized, eventually, that he was _longing_ for that touch, holding out until it came, even when it meant suffering even greater torments then he might otherwise have done. Began to take a fierce pride in holding out, even against the Master's own hands, for as long as he could, since he knew that would please the Master more then his final crumbling ever did. Felt oddly unsurprised and unashamed when he sometimes touched that place he'd found before, where pain and pleasure melded, and his body reacted to excruciating torture as if to the most exquisite pleasure.

The world narrowed to just a few things. The pain. The sometimes-pleasure. Hunger, thirst, fear, anger, even the wanting he'd felt, one by one were stripped away, until all that existed was him, in darkness, in delicious agony, sometimes silent, sometimes screaming.

And then, as suddenly as it had all begun, it ended, the training finished. He was carefully helped out of the last room, down an echoing corridor, to a place where he was carefully bathed, soothing balms and poultices put on the worst of his injuries, wrapped in a soft clean robe smelling of nothing worse then sunshine and the ocean breeze. No one spoke to him, just used occasional gentle touches to guide him.

Wrapped in his soft robe he was guided to a small room, just large enough for the narrow bed along one wall, the small table under the window. It was not a large window, but it let in sunlight, and the distant sounds and smells of the city. He lay down where he could see the sky, high white wisps of cloud scudding across the unending blueness. Someone held a cup to his lips. He drank, thirstily, ignoring the bitter herbal tang to it. The cup was taken away, the person left. He lay motionless, feeling overwhelmingly tired, wanting only to sleep, some part of him knowing that was in part the drink and not caring.

He felt... empty. Cleansed. Wondered what could fill this vast echoing space inside of him. Lay there, waiting for sleep to claim him. After a while he noticed his hair and face were wet, the pillow under his head soaked from the tears sliding from his eyes.

He sat up, mopped his face dry with the hem of his robe, hands shaking with exhaustion. Realized he was alone and unguarded for the first time in days – weeks, perhaps, he didn't know, all sense of passing time had long since fled him. Calmly rose to his feet, stepped off the bed onto the unstable top of the small storage chest, carefully not-looking at his bruised and battered body, ignored the numbing exhaustion that urged him to turn and return to the bed. Reached up, lightly touching the sill of the window, carefully feeling out the size and shape of it. Small, but he was smaller yet.

* * *

A tap on the door, a worried voice. "Master Edelbach?"

"Yes? What is it?" he called back, annoyed at the interruption. He'd kept achingly long hours, overseeing the elf's training while keeping up with his usual work, and was trying to deal with the inevitable backlog of minor things he'd had to put aside for lack of time.

"It's... that elf, sir. Zevran," the voice called back worriedly.

Edelbach was on his feet and yanking open the door with no sense of having walked across the intervening space.

"What is it?" he demanded from the frightened man in the hallway – one of the herbalists from the infirmary, by his dress. "Is he ill?"

"No, sir... he's gone."

Edelbach cursed venemously.


	11. A Rapid Recovery

"How are you feeling today?" the healer, Kariel, asked as she knelt beside his cot.

He frowned, licked his lips, considering the question. "Better?" he hazarded.

That drew a low laugh from the woman. He liked Kariel; she had sure but gentle hands. In his earliest days here tending his badly infected wounds had been a painful and rather disgusting process, but her hands had never faltered, never flinched from causing necessary pain. He knew he'd known hands like that once before, though he couldn't remember when or where. He remembered very little, from the time before waking up to find himself on a cot in a tent, in an encampment of the Dalish.

He'd been badly fevered when a couple of Dalish scouts had all but tripped over his comatose body in the woods. Normally the Dalish cared only a little more for their city elf cousins then they did for the shem, but it was obvious to them that this young elf had somehow escaped from horrendous torture, and was close to death from starvation and infection. They'd brought him back to camp, so that their healer could at least ease his passage. Kariel, their chief healer, had insisted on trying to treat him, not just drugging him insensible, and to everyone's surprise – including hers, she later assured him – he'd held on to life, then slowly began to recover.

Physically, anyway – his memory seemed gone, driven out by either the fever or what had gone before it. The Dalish were his mother's people – he remembered that much, though little more. When he tried to remember anything about his mother – her face, her voice, her name, anything at all – the only thing he could bring to mind was a pair of gloves, of very thin sueded leather, cut and embroidered in the Dalish style. But he couldn't even picture the embroidery properly, just knew it had been there. A pity, Kariel had told him – unless they were being made as trade goods, the patterns used tended to be specific to different clans and families, and might have helped to identify who she was.

But of who he was, of why or where he'd been tortured, who by, how he'd come to be in the forest, so far from anywhere – that, he knew nothing of. Not even his name remained to him anymore, nor any idea of his age, though by his physical development Kariel placed him at mid to late teens.

"Let's get you sitting up," Kariel said, slipping one slender but surprisingly strong arm behind his shoulders and helping to lift him up. He managed to turn, sliding his legs off the edge so that he was sitting up, Kariel moving along with him so they ended sitting side by side, her arm still supporting him. He frowned down at his legs, distressed by how gaunt and weak they are. The fevers and sickness, his inability to eat for much of his first few days here, the already half-starved state he'd been in even before that and days of lying motionless in bed, had melted any spare flesh from his body. He could smell the rank stink of his own body, overlaid with the herbal scent of the poultices and salves he'd been so liberally coated with that little naked flesh was visible, despite his unclothed state.

"Do you think you can sit on your own?" Kariel asked, eyeing him thoughtfully. "I would like to change the bedding and wash you, if you can stay upright for long enough.

"For clean bedding and a bath, I can stay upright as long as you desire," he said fervently, turning his head carefully to look at her.

Kariel, he noticed from this close, had deep smile lines at the corners of her dark green eyes. They were crinkling now, as she smiled in amusement at his words. "See that you do, then," she said, voice severe, and carefully removed her arm.

He sat there, concentrating on not falling over, which was surprisingly hard work at the moment, while she bustled around, stripping the stained sheets off the cot. She dropped them outside the door of the tent, and he could hear her talking to someone quietly, before she ducked back in, a basin of warm water in hand. She put it down, fetched clean rags and some soap – herbal scented, like everything around her – and efficiently lathered up a rag and began gently wiping him clean, working from his feet up. She had to change rags several times, as they grew filthy with the salves and poultices, and the grime of his body. She frowned as she delicately swabbed his face clean.

"I wish I could give your hair a proper wash," she said. "It will have to wait a few days, until you're strong enough for a proper bath."

She settled for giving it a good combing with some soapy water, and then loosely braiding the lank strands back from his face. By the time she'd also re-applied salve to those of his still-healing wounds that she judged needed a fresh coating, he was starting to shake with exhaustion from the effort of sitting up. She spread a fresh sheet on the cot, then helped him to lie down, before spreading a second sheet over top of him. He dropped off to sleep almost as soon as he lay down.

* * *

"What's your name?" Kariel asked abruptly as she walked at his side around the edge of the clearing.

"Zev..." he said, then blinked, and stopped walking. He'd almost remembered something, for a moment, but the thoughts had already fled. He swore in frustration.

"It'll come back to you, in time," Kariel assured him, smiling as she patted his arm. "So your name was Seff or something similar?"

"I... yes. I think so," he said. "It sounds... almost right?"

"Then we'll call you Seff for now," she said warmly, and resumed walking, touching his back lightly to coax him into motion again as well. "You're recovering well physically. I think when we move again tomorrow, you should walk as much as you can, instead of riding it out in my aravel."

He nodded. They finished their circuit and returned to the cluster of aravels and tents at one end of the large clearing. He could feel the appraising eyes of the other elves on him; most of them had yet to decide whether they were going to accept his presence among them, now that he was so clearly going to live after all. Taking in a "flat-ear" elf to allow him a more comfortable death was one thing, accepting him as a member of their clan was another. Especially when they – and he – knew nothing of his past.

Kariel saw him seated on a log near the clan's storyteller, then went off to get food for the both of them. He settled back, listening to the words of the storyteller, letting the old, familiar words wash over him. While the Dalish did have some tales, or versions of tales, that were particular to them, most of the stories they told were known to elves everywhere, even to many humans. As he closed his eyes and listened, he caught the briefest fragment of memory – sitting down somewhere, hearing this same story, surrounded by other children, all of them listening quietly to someone telling the story... he couldn't picture the teller, couldn't even have said whether they were male or female, young or old. Just – that he'd heard this before, and felt safe and comforted while listening.

"Seff?"

He opened his eyes, and found Kariel standing nearby, a full plate of food in each hand, a concerned look on her face. "Are you all right?" she asked him.

"Yes, I just... almost remembered something, while listening to the tale."

She nodded, and handed him a plate, then sat down on the log beside him. They ate in companionable silence, after which she saw him back to the tent.

"I've told our Keeper that I believe you're well enough healed to begin weapons training," she told him.

"Weapons training? Do I... need that?" he asked hesitantly.

"Yes, it's very important that everyone in the clan knows how to hunt and defend themselves; much of the territory we pass through is dangerous, and sometimes we encounter hostile shem. You'll have to learn how to use at least one weapon reasonably well, and then keep it handy at all times."

"All right," he agreed.

* * *

He managed to walk for half the day before tiring and retreating to Kariel's aravel. When they stopped for the night, she roused him, ate a meal with him, then took him over to where an elderly male elf was laying out a row of weapons on a cloth on the ground.

"Seff, this is our weapon's master, Wehrian. He'll help you select a weapon, and begin training you in its use."

Wehrian rose to his feet, and looked Seff over. "You look like you were fairly fit before your recent illness," he judged. "Let me see your hands."

He looked them over, front and back, frowning thoughtfully. "No callouses. Well, that may change, depending on what work you get put to, and how often you have a weapon or tool in hand," he said, smiling and releasing Seff's hands.

He crouched down by the spread cloth, gesturing for Seff to do the same across from him. "We mainly use edged weapons," he explained, gesturing at the ones spread out on the cloth. "Some, like Kariel, prefer just a single small weapon – a dagger – and some prefer a sword. Or paired weapons, most commonly paired daggers, or sword and dagger, though I know of a few who prefer paired swords. Our magic users use staffs, though more for concentrating their power then as a weapon – it can be used as such, but we have very few who want to train for both uses. And then almost everyone can use a bow, as its more suitable for hunting then edged weapons are. Bows are also a large part of our defence against encroaching shem. Which of these do you think you'd like to try, or might already know how to use?"

Seff frowned at the array of weapons. The edges of the daggers and swords glinted dangerously in the sequins of light filtering through the trees overhead. He had a brief flash of sensory memory – the weight and feel of hilts in his hands, the stretch of muscles as he ducked and whirled, the impact of blade against blade – and then it faded again. He flinched away from the bladed weapons, not liking the thought of having one in hand. "Bow," he said hurriedly.

Wehrian nodded. "A good choice," he said calmly, and picked up the bladed weapons one by one, sheathing them and returning them to a nearby chest, before picking up the first of several bows and cross-bows that he thought might be of a size and weight suitable for Seff to use. In the end they settled on a short bow, rather then the long bow that Wehrian more commonly taught; it would be easier for the slender youth to manage.

He spent some time teaching Seff how to string and unstring it, the proper grip to use when holding it, how to draw it with two fingertips just barely hooked over the string. He had Seff practise all of that several times, then when it was obvious the young man was starting to tire from even that much exertion, smiled and sent him off to rest again.

* * *

Seff recovered quickly from his ordeal, and gradually began to find an acceptance within the clan. His lack of a past still bothered him, but the few times he did get some flash of memory, it always left him feeling more uneasy and unsettled then anything else.

He found things to enjoy in this new life; the beauty of the forest, the friendship of Kariel and a few other of the more accepting Dalish, the ease with which he learned bow skills and how to move quietly through the forest when hunting. He began doing a share of the camp chores, as well, though since he still flinched away from anything bladed there were only a few things he could do – helping to set up the halla pen, laying and tending the cook fire, things like that. One of the more grandmotherly elves started to teach him how to sew, and he found he enjoyed the simplicity of the task. And scissors didn't rouse the sameuneasiness in him that knives did. He mainly did simple sewing – seams, hems, mending tears or basting on patches – but was fascinated by the fancier embroidery that some of the women did, and much to the amusement of the sewing group regulars begged to be taught the stitches for it.

He was starting to settle in, to be accepted, to make a place for himself. But naturally it didn't last.

* * *

The clan had been nervous ever since leaving their previous camp site. They'd had problems with the shem in the area they were now moving through several times over the last few years, and the previous year it had escalated to the point that the Dalish had left several shem hunters dead in their wake. If there was another route they could have taken that wouldn't have required them going weeks out of their way, they would have.

They had scouts out while they moved, and pickets set up when they stopped for the night. but still the first sign of trouble they had was when the attack began, dark-clad shem boiling out of the woods, faces grim. The camp seemed bedlam as elves woke and came out of their aravels and tents, weapons in hand. Seff ran to join those gathering to protect the children, his bow in hand. The shem had an early advantage, attacking a sleeping camp as they'd managed, and several Dalish were already down, dead or wounded. He rapidly strung his bow, nocked an arrow, then looked for a target. But between the darkness and the milling around of the shem as they fought with the elves, he didn't dare shoot; there was too much chance he'd hit one of the defenders instead of one of the attackers.

He saw an elf fall, then a second, and then a group of shem were rushing toward where he and several others stood guard between the fight and the clan's youngsters. _Now_ he had a target he could shoot at safely, and did so, hearing the twangs of bowstrings to either side of him. One of the shem fell, pieced with two arrows. He calmly nocked a second arrow, drew, shot. His target dodged aside even as he released, the arrow disappearing into the darkness. He cursed, and then the group of shem were on them.

Time seemed to slow, as he ducked a thrust, deflected another with his forearm as he dropped. He took his weight on his arms for a moment, his leg lashing out and up to take a shem in the throat, then bounced back to his feet The man staggered back, choking to death, his throat crushed by the force of the blow. A second fell, to his right, as the elf on that side successfully killed one with the daggers she'd switched to when they drew too close for her bow to be useful.

There were too many shems closing in on them, and he didn't have a weapon in his hands, having dropping his bow at some point in that first fight. Another was even now stepping over the thrashing body of the first he'd killed, sword and dagger in hands. He deflected their sword, then as they tried to stab him with the offhand dagger, dodged the blow and caught them by the wrist. A painful pinch hold and the man's grip loosened, and a moment later he'd disarmed him and had the dagger in his own hand. He used it to deflect a second blow of the sword, then gutted him, and took his sword as well.

The blades felt _right_ in his hands, and as he exploded into motion, some buried part of him roused. He _knew_ this, knew how to move, when to thrust or slash or stab, to duck, to dodge. The shem attacking him and his companions seemed to melt away, one after another either falling to the ground or fleeing back into the dark. And then it was over, and he was standing by himself, streaked with blood and worse, the weapons held laxly at his sides.

Kariel was picking her way over to him. "Seff?" she said worriedly, staring at the carnage around his feet, eyes growing large with fear - fear _of_ him, not _for_ him.

Not Seff. Zev. Zevran. A Crow. Such as he was... would never be welcome among the Dalish. "No," he told her quietly, bitterly. "Not Seff."

She came to a stop, scrutinized him carefully. "You've remembered who you are," she said abruptly.

"Yes, to my sorrow. Thank you for your care of me, my lady," he said, giving her an elegant bow. "It is best I go, now."

He darted off, vanishing into the darkness before anyone could stop him. He had only a vague idea of where they were - somewhere southwest of Seleny, in the Green Dales, he thought – but it shouldn't be too hard to find his way back to civilization again, and then... back to Antiva City. Back to his master. Back to where he belonged.


	12. Punishment

Master Edelbach frowned as he left his office and headed down the stairs to the ground floor. Master Kerrel had been pecking away at him in council recently, and from some of the jabs he had made, might have heard that all was not as it should be in Edelbach's domain.

He'd kept the loss of one of his apprentices quiet at first, believing that in Zevran's conditions it would be hours, perhaps a few days at most, before he was recovered. But days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, with nothing more being found of the last apprentice then what might have been the robe he'd been wearing when last seen. The point at which he could have reported a runaway – or worse, stolen – apprentice to the council without issue being made of it had long since passed.

He had certainly begun to wonder if the elf had been stolen by one of the other masters, or even by some private cell belonging to one of the hundred royal houses; the latter would do it as one of the few ways to add a properly trained Crow to their number, though Zevran's training was far from over at this point. The former – had myriad reasons, from blackmail to spite.

If there was any one master he could believe would do it, it was Kerrel. They'd disliked each other as soon as they'd first met as master and apprentice, and that had progressed to outright hatred over the years since. More then once he'd found himself wishing that he'd culled the boy rather then passing him off to another training master. Kerrel had grown into a viper, not particularly skilled as a working Crow but devastating on the political side of things, leveraging his skill in politics into a mastership at a surprisingly young age. Privately, Edelbach suspected Kerrel's fingerprints might have been all over the minor crisis that flared into a major one and took three masters with it before it was resolved, which had created the opening the young Crow had moved into. Of course even if he'd ever had proof of it, it would have been of no real use – that was what the politicals _did_ , and other Masters would have merely seen it as further proof of how skilled Kerrel was.

Edelbach decided to take a walk around the garden before retiring to his quarters. It was at a particularly pretty stage of growth, the wolf's bane and foxglove both in bloom, their beauty as much excuse for growing them as their toxicity. As he slowly paced around the curving brick pathway through the deserted garden, he noted that the snakeweed vine trained up the back wall was overdue for a trimming. He paused to admire its mix of fresh purple blooms, emerald green unripe berries and brilliant red ripe berries, then frowned, looking around alertly.

He was in motion even as a slight figure rose from behind a bed of columbine and belladonna, his robes bellowing out in a confusing swirl of fabric that would help to deflect anything thrown his way. A moment later he had the unresisting figure pinned to the ground, a knife at his throat, a second pressed to his belly. An elf, coppery-blond...

"Zevran!" he gasped in surprise.

"Master," Zevran croaked out.

* * *

Edelbach settled back in his chair, frowning at the tired-looking elf seated on the far side of the desk from him, two guards flanking him. He tapped the stack of paper in front of him, which documented the examination and interrogation of the apprentice since his return the night before. It looked like his biggest fear – that the elf was now under the control of some other person – might be dismissed.

"So you were among the Dalish for the last couple of months?" he asked.

"Yes, Master," Zevran said tiredly – he'd been allowed no sleep since his return, and had been awake and on the move for almost a full two days before that; he was nearly falling asleep from exhaustion even as he sat there. "I... had forgotten who I was, until we were attacked by sh... until we were attacked, and I had to fight. Then I remembered. I returned as swiftly as I could, Master."

Edelbach grunted acknowledgement. "I am pleased that you did the right thing and returned, but I must still punish you for having run in the first place."

"Yes, Master," the elf said quietly.

"Thirty lashes," he said sternly. "A week in close confinement, and then a month of menial labour. Then I will consider if you are still worthy of further training. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Master," the elf said, voice hoarse from both tiredness and fear. Thirty lashes could cripple a man; he had reason to fear. His punishment could easily reduce him from a promising apprentice to being good for nothing but a menial labourer for the remainder of his life. Or worse; thirty lashes, delivered the right way, could also kill him. Or leave him alive, but unfit for even menial labour. He had to be worrying about which of those fates the master intended him for, even after Edelbach had spoke of the possibility of resuming his training at a later date.

"Take him to the cells for now," Edelbach told the guards. "I will administer the punishment myself, after lunch." He turned his attention back to Zevran. "Consider your folly while you wait."

* * *

At least he hadn't had to wait very long, Zevran thought to himself as the guards returned to the cell and led him away again. He'd been there only a couple of hours, long enough to consider all the futures he might have after this point, and even doze off briefly, sprawled out on the hard wooden bench. Not long enough to rest him, only long enough to make him feel even more tired, his head buzzing with exhaustion, eyes dry and gritty.

They led him out into the training yard. A post had been erected in the middle of it, using a socket usually used for training dummies. This post was tall and bare, save for a set of shackles attached to a ring at the top. The yard itself was filled with a silent gathering of apprentices, of every age from new intake to those who'd graduated but were still waiting for their first assignment. Everyone was there; apprentices, teachers, trainers, torturers, the lesser masters that assisted Edelbach in his work. And Edelbach, standing near a small table on which the whips waited, neat coils of black or brown leather.

He was brought to a stop near the post, and the reason for his punishment, and the terms of it, read out by one of the lesser masters. As he spoke, Edelbach shrugged out of his voluminous robes, stripping down to just leggings and soft leather buskins. He was impressively fit, shoulders wide and muscular, stomach still as flat and taunt as a man half his age, his upper arms as big around as Zevran's thighs. He'd clearly never allowed himself to go soft just because he didn't do assignments. Zevran shuddered, imagining what he could do with a whip if he was angry enough; strip the flesh right off Zevran's bones, if he had a mind to.

He forced himself to meet his master's eyes. Edelbach still had his usual calm expression. "Put him up," he said in a carrying voice, nodding to the post.

The shackles were at a height better suited to humans than elves; Zevran had to stand on his toes once his hands had been drawn over his head and locked into them. He was starting to feel truly frightened now, knew that if he was left this way for long he was going to start trembling, between the fear and the muscle strain, and felt shamed at the thought of so many witnessing him in a moment of weakness.

Footsteps scuffed softly across the pavement behind him. Edelbach, approaching with a whip, he thought. But they came closer, right up behind him, until he could feel the heat of the man's body, smell the faint musk of his sweat. Fingers tangled in his hair, tipped his head back and turned it, so he was looking at his master.

"Open your mouth," Edelbach said neutrally, holding up a folded strip of leather in his other hand. Zevran obediently did as told. Edelbach positioned it in his mouth, draping across his tongue and out both sides. "Bite down, hard."

Zevran did so, wanting to grimace at the sour taste of the leather. A rush of saliva filled his mouth, and he had to swallow around the obstruction.

Edelbach pushed his head back forward again, between his two up-stretched arms, before releasing his hair. He felt the master's fingers lightly touch his back as the man's arm dropped, heard him whisper "courage" in a voice so quiet none but Zevran could possibly hear it, before he walked away again. Zevran drew a deep, slow breath through his nose, abruptly feeling oddly calm, even as he awaited his punishment. He found himself remembering the sure feel of his master's hands in the dungeon. There would be pain when he was whipped, of that he was certain, but he realized that he _trusted_ that Edelbach would do nothing worse, would not intentionally injure or cripple him with the whip. He would survive this, as he'd survived the training in pain. And he'd get through the confinement and punishment afterwards, and prove that he was worthy of finishing his training. Worthy of his master.

The first stroke of the whip was still a startling thing to feel; bound as he was he couldn't see what was happening, not even to know which of the whips Edelbach had selected. The sudden strike of a narrow leather whip cutting across his back from left shoulder down to right waist made him jerk in his chains. He was glad for the leather in his mouth, even more so when the first blow was followed by a second, cutting across his back barely an inch below the first. Five stripes done left to right, then a brief pause and five more cut down his back, right to left, crossing the welts of the original set. His back felt on fire, every welt a distinct line of pain, worse at the points where line crossed line or skin had torn. His back stung as sweat and blood trickled down it.

Another pause, and then more strokes, with a different whip. Something wider and flatter, laying another series of five strokes down each side, beneath the first sets, each of those stokes just slightly overlapping the previous one. It left his skin feeling hot and tight, the fire spread out instead of concentrated in welts. He was dizzy now, exhausted and tired and in pain, blood roaring in his ears. He sagged as much as he could in his chains, in the pause while the master switched to another whip.

Blows, eight of them in rapid succession, four down the back of each thigh, a sharp cutting pain. He could feel moisture dripping down his legs afterwards; whatever had been used had been enough to break the skin, not just raise welts. There was a final, longer pause, while the master switched whips one last time. He heard a faint murmur from those watching, knew Edelbach had selected something especially nasty, the only warning he had before the final two strokes lashed across his back, cutting a deep X in his skin, from left shoulder to right thigh, from right to left. He'd have screamed if he could, but the leather clenched in his mouth effectively gagged him.

He heard the watching audience filing away, silent save for their footsteps on the stone. Only once they were gone did he hear Edelbach move, walking up close behind him again.

"Bucket," the master said. Zevran braced himself, knowing what was coming next, but still jerked and hissed through his nose as cold salted water was poured over him, washing away the blood. It served a duel purpose, he knew – additional pain, and cleansing the wounds so they wouldn't fester. The master's fingers tangled in his hair a second time, pulling his head back, working the leather loose from his mouth; his teeth had pierced right through the outermost layers of it.

Then the two guards, faces impassive, released him from the shackles. They supported him upright, each holding onto an arm on opposite sides of him, while Edelbach himself gently cleaned and bandaged his wrists, torn from their contact with the shackles. That gentleness undid him where the whipping itself hadn't; he found himself trembling uncontrollably, tears running down his face. Edelbach gave him an probing look, then the slightest of smiles. "Well done," he murmured, voice warm with approval.

Edelbach stepped away then, pulling his robes back on, his usual imperturbable expression settling on his face. "This way," he commanded, and led the way into the building and down to the dungeon level, to a hallway with a series of small metal trapdoors set in the floor. He selected one, bent down and lifted the heavy metal door with ease, revealing a round chimney-like hole in the floor. "Arms down, I think," he said calmly, eyeing Zevran thoughtfully.

The two guardsmen lifted Zevran, pinning his arms against his sides, and lowered him feet-first into the hole. Of necessity their movements brushed across the welts and broken skin of his back, drawing a hiss of pain from him. He forced himself not to struggle as he was lowered into the tight-fitting dark hole, to continue trusting that Edelbach meant for him to survive this, too.

The guards had to drop him the last little bit into the hole, his feet coming down bruisingly hard on a metal grate at the lower end of it. Looking up, he judged it was perhaps a foot or so taller then he was, big enough to take a full grown man if needed. He could see Edelbach standing beside the hole, looking calmly down at him, before the metal door was swung shut. He could hear the scrape of it being locked shut, the footsteps of the three receding, and then he was alone in the absolute darkness of the narrow stone chimney.

He could hear a faint sound of running water from somewhere below him, feel a mild chill rising from that direction. A week. He had to get through a week of standing in this confined space, unable to sit, unable even to raise his arms from his sides, so close was the confinement. That would become torturous in time, he knew. He had survived torture already, he reminded himself. He would endure this too. He braced himself face-forward against one side of the shaft, closed his eyes, and let his exhaustion claim him, dropping him into uneasy sleep.

* * *

Zevran lost his sense of how much time had passed in the hole very quickly. At seemingly random intervals the door above him would be opened. He quickly learned to close his eyes tightly at the first scrape of the lock being undone; trapped in the darkness as he was, even the faintest light hurt his eyes. Moreover, each opening of the door heralded a bucket or two of salted water being poured over him, cleansing him of any wastes that hadn't made it to the grate, but leaving him with an itchy coating of salt on his skin that was a mild torture in its own right.

Then he'd be fed and watered, someone leaning down into the hole to hold a waterskin to his lips, feed him scraps of bread, meat, cheese and fruit. Once, to his surprise, it was Edelbach himself, reaching in to feel what he could reach of Zevran's back and make sure he was healing cleanly from the whipping.

He endured the between-times as best he could, sleeping when he grew exhausted enough to overcome the discomfort. When he was awake he regularly changed position as much as the tight space allowed, spent hours rhythmically flexing his muscles to fend off the cramping and weakness that standing near-motionless for so long would otherwise induce.

And then it was over, ropes being fastened around his chest to draw him out with. He kept his eyes tightly shut as he was helped to the infirmary upstairs from the dungeons, waiting for them to adjust to the presence of light again. He was given a warm bath, then his scabbed welts were checked to be sure they were all healing cleanly. A couple places required some attention where small pockets of pus had formed despite the salt water treatment, then once he'd been salved and wrapped in a soft robe and fed, he was returned to the very room he'd fled so foolishly months before. The window was still invitingly open, unbarred, but he felt not the least interested in climbing out of it a second time; he still couldn't understand what had caused him to do something so stupid to begin with.

"You're to have two days of rest and mild exercise before you begin your month of labour," one of the attendants told him. "You're confined to the building until it's over, unless you're specifically ordered to perform a task outside. Do you understand?"

"Yes," he said.

The month passed quickly, spent in hard work. He wore the same coarse grey tunic as the rest of the compound's servants, slept in the same rooms as they, ate the same cheap but filling food at the same hours. He stayed silent, speaking only when spoken to, doing his work as efficiently and as well as he could manage, no matter what the task he'd been set was. He suspected he was purposefully being given many of the more noisome or strenuous tasks, but accepted that – this was punishment, after all, not a holiday. His hands roughened from the work, his shoulders filling out with additional muscle from all the heavy lifting. In the little free time he had each day, he sought out spaces where he could run through his exercises, making sure he kept in as best condition and practise as he could. He had failed his master once; he was determined not to ever fail him again.

Finally, finally, came the day that a lesser master came and fetched him away from his tasks, saw him bathed – he'd been in the middle of cleaning the catchment pit of a garderobe at the time – and dressed in clothes suitable to an apprentice, then brought before Edelbach.

"Good, we can move on with your training," Edelbach said, looking him over. "Your schedule will be divided into two halves. In the mornings you will resume the usual martial training. In the afternoons, you will be reporting to the west wing for training in the arts of pleasure. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Master," he said, the only acceptable answer.


	13. Challenge Given

Training in the amatory arts was something Zevran absorbed as easily as he'd earlier learned how to hold and wield a dagger. He threw himself into the learning with whole-hearted enjoyment, seeing this, too, as another weapon to add to his arsenal. And unlike several of his fellow students, who made the shameful mistake of confusing carnal pleasuring for real affection, he never mistook the false face of his lessons for reality. Not for him the sudden crushes and wild heartbreaks that some of the students endured, before they learned to differentiate between lust and love; he seemed armoured against ever making that mistake, perhaps due to his childhood in a whorehouse, where he'd have seen very little of love and far too much of lust.

Edelbach was pleased by that, and approved the elf's entry into advanced training, something that only a very small percentage of pupils were ever apt for, and that few managed to pass through the entire regimen of. The teachers, Edelbach knew, took bets on what part of it would finally be the stopping point of any particular student, the point where they broke and were unable to continue further in the often harsh training. His own private bet after seeing Zevran through his pain training was that the elf would be one of those rare students who took it all in stride, never afraid of receiving or dealing pain, never truly broken by any degradation.

"He'd have made a legendary courtesan," one teacher remarked to Edelbach one day, reporting on the progress of the students. "If he wasn't killed out of jealousy in his first few years. So far nothing phases him, no matter how... exotic."

The next time he saw the elf, he found himself thinking that Zevran seemed to be thriving under his current regimen of training. He was sparring against a teacher and a group of the junior apprentices, scoring touch after touch as he successfully held them all off, a wide grin of enjoyment on his face. He was wearing nothing but linen breeches while they were all properly armoured, utterly fearless as he danced and dodged among them, body streaked with dust and sweat. The teacher had a look of concentration on his face as he strove to land a touch on the elf, but even with Zevran's movement hampered by the need to avoid the students, it was several long minutes and narrow misses before he finally landed a blow against Zevran, and even that would only have been a crippling blow with a real weapon, not a killing one.

Edelbach clapped, bringing the lesson to an abrupt end, and signalled for Zevran to come speak to him. The elf walked over, smiling widely, his chest still heaving from his exertions. "Master," he said, giving Edelbach a deeper bow than was strictly called for.

Edelbach snorted, then looked the elf over carefully, signalling for Zevran to remain still as he slowly circled him. He still bore remarkably few scars from his long years of training. Even the whipping Edelbach had given him had healed cleanly for the most part, leaving just a few faint broken lines of paler flesh against his richly tanned skin. Edelbach reached out, lightly touched his hand to the worst scar, felt a faint tension and shiver pass through the skin under his hand, warm from both exertion and sunlight. He felt the elf lean just slightly into his hand, head dropping fractionally, and was oddly unsurprised at the realization that the elf... _wanted_ to be touched. By him.

"That will hopefully fade further over time," he said, neutrally, as he removed his hand. "You are doing well in your training. I am pleased."

"Thank you, master," Zevran said, gifting him another of those sudden brilliant smiles of his.

"Back to work," Edelbach told him, gesturing with his chin to where the training master and his students were standing, discussing the sparring match. Zevran nodded, once, and bounded back over to join the discussion and demonstrate, at slower speed, some of the moves and counters he had used.

Edelbach felt a slight tinge of regret as he turned away and resumed his tour of the training grounds. He'd had students lusting after him before; but this was the first time he'd felt in the least tempted to break his rule of avoiding involvement with his students.

No matter how skilled or beautiful the elf was, he did not plan to give in to temptation.

* * *

Zevran, apparently, had other ideas. And a remarkable amount of persistence.

It started off subtly enough, the elf putting himself in Edelbach's path at least once a day, at least on those days when he wasn't thoroughly tied up in his studies of the erotic arts. Edelbach would leave a meeting, or step out of his office, or go for a walk around the grounds, and at some point there would be Zevran, lounging insouciantly against a wall, or seated on a window sill working on some minor bit of weapon or armour care, or sprawled out on a bench, soaking up the sun like an oversized cat. He'd always smile at the sight of Edelbach, sometimes speak up if the master was alone, innocuous questions for the most part. But always with that unspoken invitation in his eyes, in the way he positioned himself relative to Edelbach as he talked.

It amused Edelbach at first, then annoyed him, then began to amuse him again.

And then one day he walked into his office, and found a leaf sitting on his desk. Which wouldn't have been significant to anyone else, except that the elf had been toying with just such a leaf in the garden earlier that day; this was no chance wind-blown leaf, but a message from Zevran, a sign that he'd managed to penetrate the defences of Edelbach's sanctum enough to leave it there. Edelbach spent a half hour carefully looking things over before divining how the elf might have accomplished the deed – thankfully without a true penetration of his office defences, just some cleverness with thread and a long stick, most likely. He snorted, laid a careful trap for anyone trying the same thing again, and disposed of the leaf. The next day the trap was triggered, and Zevran had a rueful look and a swollen wrist the next time Edelbach saw him.

And then there was another leaf on his desk two days after that, and a smug look on the elf's face that actually drew a raised eyebrow out of the master.

Somehow it developed into a silent game between the two of them after that, seeing when and where the leaf, or feather, or flower, or bit of colourful cloth would appear, what traps Edelbach would set to better protect his lair. It was only later that he realized it had become a courtship of a kind – a potentially very deadly kind, if the elf grew careless with any of the more lethal guards on Edelbach's office.

He walked in one day to find, not a small item to indicate that the elf had again succeeded in slipping something into his office, but the elf himself, sitting bold as brass on his desk. Edelbach paused, then closed the door behind him and slowly circled the room, examining his traps and telltales, then snorted and went and sat at his desk, Zevran spinning to face him, grinning broadly.

"How?" he asked, dryly. And Zevran told him.

"May I claim a forfeit?" the elf asked, almost shyly, when he was done.

"That depends on what you want to claim," Edelbach told him, voice even drier than normal.

Zevran hesitated, then smiled. "Just a kiss, master."

Edelbach snorted, then found himself rising to his feet, leaning forward, resting his hands on the desktop to either side of the elf. "You may," he told him, face just inches from Zevran's.

Zevran leaned forward, reaching up to lightly hold his head, fingers twining into his hair, and kissed him, a gentle brushing contact of their lips to start, then flicking his tongue against Edelbach's lips, coaxing them open. He dragged the kiss out, thrusting his tongue into Edelbach's mouth, sucking Edelbach's tongue into his, a long lingering exploration on both their parts, until finally Edelbach lifted his own hands, lightly grasping the elf's waist. The intensity of Zevran's reaction to that simple touch surprised him, the elf moaning into his mouth and raising up on his knees, pressing himself against Edelbach's body, hands tightening their grip on Edelbach's head, tongue thrusting deeply into his mouth. He could feel the hardness of the elf's erection pressing against him even through their multiple layers of clothes, felt his own body stir in reaction to the heated pressure. He pushed him away, gently. " _Just_ a kiss," he reminded him, surprised by how softly he said it, the breathlessness of his own voice, by how much he regretted drawing that line between them.

The elf nodded, sank back on his heels, eyes drifting closed for a moment as he forced his panting breaths to slow, to return to regular breathing, both of them ignoring the evidence of his excitement. Finally he looked up again, spoke, voice low and husky and almost pleading. "What must I do, master?"

Edelbach frowned, sinking back into his chair. He should tell the elf that there was nothing he _could_ do that would lead Edelbach to give him what he so obviously wanted, and yet... he couldn't bring himself to do it. Not with the elf right there, so obviously undone by desire. Not when some inner part of Edelbach longed to give in to base impulses right now, _take_ what was being so freely offered, and nail the elf to the desk.

"Appear in my bed, as you appeared here. And I'll at least consider it," he said slowly.

Zevran nodded tiredly. Neither of them had to say that the task was near impossible; Edelbach's office was only lightly defended, compared to what awaited anyone foolish enough to attempt breaking into the bedroom of a Master Crow. If Zevran did succeed in reaching the master's bed without death or serious injury, he'd have earned his reward. It was not the sort of task that even other masters would undertake lightly.

"It will be done," Zevran said, then rose and jumped lightly down from the desk. "Thank you, master."

He bowed, then let himself out.


	14. A Challenge Met

There were times when Edelbach found himself regretting the terms he'd placed on Zevran's pursuit of him. He'd begun to think the elf had given up on his game, until he found one of his traps triggered, a small white flower resting on the stone floor beside the congealing spatter of blood. Thankfully not one of the lethal traps, though the elf would doubtless be sick for several days from the substance that had coated the blade. He momentarily considered switching out the more lethally poisoned surprises that he had scattered around for unwelcome visitors, but that would be... cheating. No, if the elf was to make it to his bed, it must be a true contest of Zevran's skill versus Edelbach's years of experience and lethal knowledge. Only then would the elf have proven himself worthy of the reward he asked for.

He was amused to later hear from the trainers that the elf had now taken a great interest in the arts of traps and poison crafting, with a special interest in avoiding or circumventing the former, and learning antidotes for the latter. He watched, fascinated and amused, as the little tokens the elf regularly left out for him to find progressed deeper into his apartments, sometimes appearing in odd locations as the elf assayed alternative routes of approach – resting in the grate of a well-trapped fireplace, left out on a ledge in the securely barred garderobe adjacent to his quarters.

Occasionally he'd find signs of the elf's less successful attempts, as well – traps that had been triggered, telltales shifted out of position, blood. Once the elf himself, comatose in the middle of his sitting room floor. He dragged him out to the hallway, and left him there, to wake as the poison naturally faded away. He smiled as he did so – the elf must have been climbing across the ceiling, hanging by his fingers and toes, to have encountered _that_ particular bit of nastiness. He was lucky he hadn't fallen wrong and killed himself.

All told, it took almost two years for Zevran to penetrate to his innermost sanctum.

* * *

Edelbach raised an eyebrow, then slowly followed the trail of tripped or disabled traps, discarded rods, wads of clay or gum, cams and hexes, ropes, and other paraphernalia the elf had apparently employed in his most recent assault on Edelbach's quarters. Some of it employed what was rather brute-force methods of bypassing or nullifying otherwise subtle traps, ones that would be unwise to use on an actual mission, but then the terms of their contract had never specified _how_ Zevran was to reach the bed, just that he was to do so.

He was smiling by the time he reached the open door to his room, certain of what he'd see. The elf, naked in his bed.

Zevran was sleeping curled up on top of the covers, his clothing in a neatly folded pile at one corner of the bed. Edelbach stood and watched him for a moment, then strode over and sat down on the edge of the bed, pleased to see the elf already stirring to wakefulness even before the weight of his body made the mattress sag.

"Good evening," he said, and was rewarded with a pleased smile from the elf. He scrutinized him carefully, noting the places where Zevran's exertions to reach this spot had left scrapes and bruises, and judging by the swelling, a sprained ankle as well. He picked up one of the elf's hands, examined the scraped and scabbed knuckles, then raised the hand to his lips and gently kissed the marks, fighting back a smile as he felt it twitch and shiver in his grasp. "What do you want, now that you are here?"

"You," was all Zevran said, eyes already darkening with desire.

Edelbach nodded, slowly, and began unfastening his robe. Zevran hastily rose to his knees, and helped him slip out of the heavy garment, carefully putting the robe aside near his own abandoned clothes while Edelbach moved to stretch out on the bed, back propped against the headboard. Edelbach was waiting for him when he turned back; the master leaned forward and reached out to twine his fingers in the elf's hair and coax him close, the elf following the tug on hands and knees with all the deadly controlled grace of a hunting cat.

As Edelbach settled back against the headboard again, Zevran moved to straddle one of his outstretched thighs, one hand sinking into the mattress by Edelbach's side while the other rising to tangle in his salt-and-pepper hair. He leaned forward, and their lips met, gently at first, both of them slowly reprising that one prior kiss in Edelbach's office, their tongues languidly exploring each other's mouth. Edelbach released Zevran's hair and lay back, passive apart from his tongue and lips, curious to see what role the elf wished him to take. After a few minutes the elf ended the kiss, settling back on his heels. He met Edelbach's eyes, his own wide and dark with desire, then slowly leaned forward again, nuzzling into his hair, drawing the lobe of his ear into his mouth and just lightly nipping it before settling back again, biting his lip and looking nervous.

Edelbach found one of his eyebrows rising. Someone who had been through advanced training should not be bashful or nervous at this point. Zevran's eyes rose to follow the moment, then he rose as well, leaning forward and lightly cupping Edelbach's face as he licked at the raised brow, startling a short laugh out of Edelbach.

Zevran leaned back slightly. "I've always wanted to do that," he confessed, a mischievous smile on his lips. "Every time you do that."

Edelbach snorted in amusement. "What else have you wished to do?" he asked.

Zevran didn't hesitate, but leaned forward, kissed his forehead, the tip of his nose, a brief brushing pass over his lips again, the point of his chin, before turning his attention to Edelbach's throat, ringing it with kisses and then laving his tongue up and down the tendons and out along Edelbach's collarbones, sometimes pausing to nip at his skin. His hands slipped free of Edelbach's hair, stroked slowly down the sides of his neck, out across his broad shoulders, down his lengthy arms, until he could tangle their fingers together. He sat back again, lifting Edelbach's hands in his, then bent his head and began kissing and licking Edelbach's hands, tongue forcing its way between the base of his fingers to lick at the webbed flesh between, curling and flicking its way to the fingertips. He drew Edelbach's fingers into his mouth one by one, sucking gently on them, his tongue licking at them, before moving on to the next. His almost worshipful attention to them was pleasurable in a way that made Edelbach's toes curl and sent an anticipatory shiver through his stomach and groin.

"I love your hands," Zevran husked, turning his head to press his cheek to the backs of them. "I _dream_ of being touched by you." He turned them over, pressed kisses to Edelbach's palms, then captured the tip of one thumb between his teeth, gently biting down before releasing it and sucking it into his mouth, hard, his tongue coiling around and around. Edelbach shuddered again, feeling a tightness in his groin, imagining that mouth and tongue on other, more sensitive parts of himself.

"Is that what you want?" he asked, voice husky with his own rising desire. "For me to touch you?"

"Yes. Please," Zevran said, his own voice a low growl.

Edelbach reclaimed his hands and sat up, raising his knees so that Zevran slid down his thigh and ended up caught across the bend of Edelbach's leg, his erection rubbing against the side of Edelbach's stomach, his right knee pressed snugly into Edelbach's groin, their bodies just inches apart.

He raised his hands, cupping Zevran's head lightly, and leaned forward, gently kissing him, the merest brush of lips, before he leaned back again. He let his hands mimic Zevran's motions of just moments before, gliding gently down his neck, out across his much slimmer shoulders – still broad for an elf – before stroking slowly down his arms. He could feel the elf shivering at his touch, see his eyes sliding partly closed, darkening further with pleasure. He slid his hands around to the elf's back, then slowly up, exploring his ridged backbone with the fingers of one hand while the other slid up across the interleaving muscles of his back, traced one jutting shoulder bone.

The elf suddenly cried out, pressing tightly against him, hips jerking. He felt a spatter of warm liquid against his side, was startled to realize the elf had been undone from just that little amount of casual stimulation. Zevran slumped against him, burying his face against the side of his neck, his arms rising to lock around Edelbach's shoulders. He could feel the burning heat of Zevran's face where it pressed against him, knew it was embarrassment, not passion, that was currently flushing the elf's skin. The knowledge made him feel oddly tender. He closed his own arms comfortingly around the lean body, held him close, sliding his hands up and down the elf's taut back in slow, soothing strokes.

"Sorry," Zevran choked out after a while, raising his head but avoiding looking Edelbach in the eyes.

Edelbach freed one hand, reached up and captured his chin, turned his head so he had to meet his eyes.

"Don't be," he whispered after quietly studying him. "I'm... flattered, I suppose, that my touch affects you so strongly."

Zevran gave a shaky laugh. "You have _no_ idea," he managed to say, voice a pale imitation of his usual manner. "Even now..." he trailed off, shifting uncomfortably, and Edelbach was surprised a second time, realizing the elf was already hardening again. He stilled his hands, looked curiously at him.

"How long have you been this way?" he asked sternly.

"Truthfully?" Zevran asked, and bit at his lip, obviously hesitant to answer.

Edelbach waited, sure from the elf's manner that the reason for his obsession with Edelbach's touch must be tied into something... potentially unnerving. He'd already more than half-guessed the answer before Zevran spoke again.

"When you... took over my pain training," he said slowly, looking down, his fingers nervously toying with the hair at the nape of Edelbach's neck. "I always knew when it was _your_ hands on me. _Always_. Even though you were _hurting_ me..." he paused, breath going ragged, before softly resuming. "I _trusted_ your touch. Trusted that you would only cause... necessary pain."

He looked hesitantly up at Edelbach, looking genuinely nervous again, seemingly afraid as to how his words would be received.

Edelbach let his hands drift into motion again, gently pulling the elf closer. "And do you want that?" he asked curiously. "For me to... hurt you?"

" _Any_ way you want to touch me, I want you to," Zevran said, his voice going low and hoarse, eyes darkening again. "You know my training."

Edelbach nodded. "I know your training," he agreed, and lowered his head to kiss the elf again.

"Help me out of the rest of these blasted clothes," he growled a few minutes later, winning a breathless laugh from the elf.

* * *

He woke feeling remarkably content, and more than a little sore; he'd not been so energetic with a partner in _years_. Zevran, he saw, was still asleep, sprawled in an abandoned pose that made him look years younger than his true age. He'd left marks on him, he saw, but then the elf had left more than a few on him as well. He reached out, lightly touched the elf's shoulder. Zevran's eyes snapped open, body tensing for a moment as he evaluated where he was, who he was with, if there was any danger, then he relaxed, smiled, and stretched like a cat before leaning over to kiss Edelbach on the end of his nose.

"Now what?" Zevran asked, face inches from his master's.

Edelbach sighed. "Now we go back to being master and apprentice, my dear."

Zevran looked crestfallen. "Yes, master," he said, and sat up, folding his long legs to sit cross-legged on the bed beside Edelbach, a mournful look on his face.

Edelbach grinned, laughed, then laughed even louder at Zevran's startled expression. He supposed it was likely the first time the elf had ever seen him in a laughing mood. "You look so much like a whipped puppy," he said fondly. "Do not fear... having once broken my rule and slept with you, I suppose it is all the more likely to happen again. _If..._ " and he held up a warning finger at Zevran's hopeful look. " _If_ you continue to apply yourself to your studies as you should, and don't allow this momentary aberration of mine to go to your head."

Zevran nodded rapidly in agreement. "Yes, master."

"Good," Edelbach said, then swung his feet to the floor and rose to his feet, scratching absently at his ribs. "Come, you can scrub my back while I bathe, and help me dress, and then I suspect it will be time for you to go help teach junior apprentices how to become senior ones."

"Yes, master," the elf agreed again, more cheerfully, and followed him off to the bath.

* * *

Edelbach had never regretted giving in to the elf's desire for him. Zevran's obsession with his touch never entirely faded away, though over the years it had waned in strength. He had worried, for a while, that the elf might come to see their relationship as more than it was, but he'd never once faltered, never once betrayed any belief that there was anything more than lust and a certain degree of trust and liking between the two of them.

That had greatly relieved Edelbach; he'd seen more then one Crow destroyed by inappropriate attachments over the years, and one thing he'd realized early on was that the elf craved affection, though he seemed content with sexual satisfaction and didn't seem to have any interest in romantic involvement. Really, the elf would have been a quite disgustingly perfect Crow were it not for little faults like his impatience with proper scouting and planning; Edelbach was privately certain he could have reached the bedroom several months earlier, if he'd been more organized and patient in his scouting of possible routes.

He looked over at the assassin, still curled up in the chair across from him, as obviously lost in memory as he himself had been for the last several minutes.

"Do you have to be back tonight, or can you stay?" he asked, wistfully.

Zevran looked up, a smile lighting his face. "I can stay," he agreed.

Edelbach smiled in return, and held out his hand. Zevran rose, and walked over to join him, shedding clothes as he walked, so that within the space of the few steps between them he ended up utterly, gloriously nude, before lowering himself to straddle Edelbach's legs.

Edelbach reached out, touching the winding line of tattoos that wrapped around the elf's torso and across one hip, disappearing behind his back to re-emerged curling up from between his legs and over one muscular thigh. "You've added more," he said curiously.

Zevran nodded. "More memories," he said softly. "Killings, mainly."

Edelbach snorted. "A foolish affectation, though at least you've largely kept them where they can be covered by your clothes. Except _those_ ," he said, reaching up to lightly touch fingertips to the three curved lines decorating Zevran's left temple and cheek. He remembered how angry he'd been when he'd first seen them, angered that the elf had had himself marked so distinctively. Zevran's explanation of their meaning had not soothed his temper; worsened it, if anything. One line, the smallest, for that foolish trainer he'd killed. One to remember his flight, return and punishment. And one that he'd always refused to explain, which Edelbach felt sure was meant to remember _him_ by, the long pursuit and that first night together.

"What's this one?" he asked, reaching out to touch a tattoo peeking over the curve of Zevran's left shoulder, one end of the thick curving line cupping around a faint crescent-shaped scar overlaying his collarbone. Zevran shivered, eyes hooding. "My second contract. The female mage."

"And this?" he asked, touching a second crescent-shaped curve, this one filled with an intricate tracery of lines rather than being solidly filled.

"First contract – a Rivaini merchant prince. He had the most intricate tattoos, all over his torso and arms..."

Edelbach nodded. "They do that. Turn around, let me see your back."

Edelbach traced his way along the line of tattoos, as they twined and twisted and curved across Zevran's back, under his right arm, across his flat stomach, down his left hip and under his buttock, across the tender flesh of his groin and back out again and over the front of his right thigh before finally ending. As he traced each one, with fingers or lips or tongue, Zevran explained what each stood for, or shook his head in silent refusal for the ones too personal, too private, to name aloud. By the time he reached the end, they were both achingly rampant and short of breath.

"Let's move this to my bedchamber," Edelbach said. "I'm too old to enjoy a tryst on a chair, no matter how large and well-padded."

Zevran laughed, and rose to his feet again. "After you, Master," he said gravely, and followed him away.


	15. An Intriguing Encounter

Taliesen felt unusually elated as he looked around the room from his chair. Zevran was sprawled out on the chaise he preferred, toying with a pair of daggers, palming them and then making them reappear in different holds. Their two apprentices – _two_ of them, not just one! – were sitting at almost rigid attention in two mismatched straight-backed chairs, watching him attentively, awaiting their orders.

He allowed himself a slow, pleased smile. "We've got a good first job as a learning experience for you two," he said quietly, allowing his pleasure to be reflected in his voice. "Just a simple little job. A foreign merchant who has stepped on a few toes, ignored one warn-off too many. And, perhaps more importantly, insulted his hostess. She is rather irked with him, and wishes her displeasure to be made clear to him."

"To the extent of having him dealt with in her own home?" Zevran asked curiously, raising one eyebrow.

"No," Taliesin said shortly. "He is still officially her guest, and therefore still sacrosanct when at her mansion or any of her places of business. He is, however, fair game when out in public, or when visiting his ship in harbour. Where he is in the habit of remaining overnight every three or four days."

"Ah," Zevran said, and smiled widely.

Taliesin looked at their apprentices. "We will divide up in pairs, one of you with Zevran, one with myself. We will need to try and learn what we can of the man's movements, the layout of his ship, what cabin he sleeps in, and so on. A little tricky, as we must do it without making our interest obvious."

One of the assistants looked puzzled. "Why not just kill him in the street?" he asked.

Zevran snorted. "Fool! Taliesin said our patron wishes her displeasure made clear – she wants him to _know_ , before he dies, why he is dying. That means it must be done somewhere with enough privacy for things to be explained clearly to him before he is killed. If she wished him merely dead in the street she would not have hired such as _us_ to accomplish it. Any lesser Crow would have done for such a crude job as that," he said, making a dismissive motion with his hand.

"As Zevran says," Taliesin agreed, nodding to the elf, hiding his displeasure. That was twice that Zevran had interupted so far. He was letting their acquisition of apprentices go to his head, perhaps, forgetting his place – that Taliesin was the senior partner, the one in charge, the one to do any explaining necessary, make any decisions. His left hand tightened just slightly on the arm of his chair, his right dropping to caress the hilt of his favourite dagger.

Zevran seemed to pick up on his mood; at least he stilled, and was silent for the remainder of the meeting. Taliesin assigned the more intelligent one of the apprentices to him; the foolish one he took himself, judging that he would need firmer supervision.

* * *

Gaining access to the ship proved almost stupidly easy. These foreigners had little wit when it came to guarding themselves from the machinations of the Crows. Some especially flashy clothing, a staged argument on the dock near the ship on a night the Merchant-Captain was not there; a bored crew member was happy to call over the pretty elven whore and hire his services for the evening.

Zevran doubted Taliesin would approve of his methods, but then Taliesin had become increasingly annoying of late, since they'd acquired apprentices. It seemed to have gone to the man's head. He needed to be reminded that Zevran was his partner, his equal, not a lesser Crow or apprentice to be ordered around.

He had one moment of worry with the sailor, when the man proved to be both rather more grabby and rather stronger than the assassin had planned for, but thankfully the man was distracted enough by trying to strip Zevran out of his clothes that the elf found it no great difficulty to slip a prepared dart out of where it was hidden in the cuff of his shirt. A scratch with that during a passionate moment, and a short time later the sailor was no longer a problem, his snores filling the small room.

Zevran slipped out of the narrow bed, neatened his hair and straightened his clothing, then slipped out into the hallway. He quickly worked his way towards the rear of the ship – the aft, he remembered it was called, for reasons he had never cared to learn – where the captain's quarters were. Some quick work with a picklock – well, as quick as he could manage, it was not his best skill – and he slipped into a surprisingly spacious room.

That was when things started to go wrong. The Rivaini merchant was not expected to visit his ship until later this evening, if at all, as he was attending a party at his hostesses' mansion tonight. Unfortunately all their observation of the man had failed to turn up one tiny but important little bit of information, Zevran discovered rather quickly, as a dagger spun out of the shadows by the bed inset in one wall, and narrowly missed skewering him – the man apparently did not occupy the cabin alone. He bit back a curse even as he dove for cover behind a large desk nearby. Damnation; the plan had been for him to hide out in the man's quarters until such time as the man returned, either tonight or tomorrow night if he kept to his usual schedule, and kill him then. There being someone else here put rather a crimp in that plan. Not to mention that it looked likely to cause him considerable personal danger as well.

At least whomever it was had made no outcry; one minor blessing. With luck he might be able to kill whomever it was, hope they would not be missed between now and the captain's return, and continue on with the original plan. Failing that, he'd like to at least escape from this cabin with his life. Sadly even if he managed to accomplish that, the merchant would undoubtedly be forewarned that someone was after him, and their chances of killing him cleanly would therefore be that much less. Taliesin was not going to be pleased. Still, he felt it was far better for him to be alive and Taliesin to be annoyed than the alternative.

Whomever had thrown the dagger was either accomplished at moving silently, or had made no move away from where they lurked in the shadowed alcove. He wondered what chance he might have of making it to the door and back out into the hallway. Or even across the room and out the largish windows and into the harbour – not an enjoyable prospect, given the filth usual in the harbour, but again, better than the alternative. The room was poorly enough illuminated – lit only by moonlight coming in those self-same windows – that if he was careful he might be able to able to ease out of cover and to one or the other exit without drawing attention.

Moving as slowly and soundlessly as he could he started to ease across the deck in the direction of the door. He wished he dared look towards the bed, but was well aware of just how startling visible eyes could prove to be in even dim light, and therefore kept he face and eyes carefully averted as he inched slowly toward the door.

Only the faintest whisper of sound warned him of a second attack. " _Brasca!_ " he yelped as he dove back towards cover, feeling a sharp tug on his sleeve as he did. He glanced toward his arm and hissed; the fabric was slashed open, and a hair-fine scratch marred his skin, droplets of blood oozing out along it. His unseen opponent's daggers must be razor-sharp. He just hoped that they weren't coated with anything, as a Crow's were likely to be. Or that, if they were, it would take a much larger exposure than that represented by the shallow scrape on his arm to endanger him.

"You are not one of the crew," a voice spoke out of the darkness by the bed. Low, female, and sultry enough to send a shiver down his spine.

"No, in fact, I am not," he said agreeably, trying to figure out from the direction of her voice just where she must be, over there in the darkness. He risked glancing around the edge of the desk he was hidden behind, trying to spot her.

"A sneak thief, perhaps?" the voice asked, curiously. He heard a faint tinkling sound, of metal against metal.

"Sometimes," he said evasively. Not exactly a lie; he was not above pilfering little easily saleable items, as long as they weren't too identifiable. Just to keep his hand in, of course.

A soft snort from the direction of the bed. "Well. If your goal here is pilferage, I would suggest you start with the bottom left drawer of that desk. That's where the petty cash is kept."

"Ah. Really?" Zevran said, mildly surprised at her words. He checked the drawer for traps, then carefully levered it open – using a knife, not bare fingers – and look inside, and found a small cloth sack that, on careful inspection, proved to contain a small quantity of coin – mostly silvers and coppers, with a few gold coins as well. "So it is. Very nice," he said. "I take it you bear a grudge against your... captain? Employer?"

"Husband," the voice responded sharply. "And yes, I bear the fat greasy bastard a _grudge_. If all you're here for is to rob from him, I believe we may have grounds for a truce. You keep your distance, I'll tell you where the best valuables in this room may be found, and then you leave."

Well, it would at least give him some chance of escaping from this room alive, if she was not lying. "I believe I am willing to agree to such an arrangement," he offered, cautiously.

"I thought you might find it tempting," she said. "Well. Stand up – slowly – and I will tell you where to look next."

He bit his lip. Having him stand up would be a perfect way to draw him out for a clean shot...

"I promise not to kill you. At least as long as you make no sudden moves in _my_ direction," she said, voice warmly amused. "Or I could scream, loudly, and you can see how well you fare against my husband's men."

He snorted, then slowly rose to his feet, keeping his hands well out from his own body, hands turned towards her and fingers spread to show he was unarmed. Or at least had no weapon currently in hand, he mentally amended.

"Well... an elf. And a very pretty one. Nice outfit."

He grinned in the direction of the voice, and gave a very slight bow. "I required a stratagem to get safely on board ship and below-decks. Playing the whore seemed an obvious choice."

"Better than being forced to act the part," she said, voice dark and bitter. "I assume that means there is the body of a crew member stuffed away somewhere?"

"Nothing so crude, I assure you," he said. "He is merely sleeping, in his own bed, and will awaken tomorrow morning with a slight headache and, with luck, little memory of me."

She snorted again, then he heard the slither of cloth against cloth, accompanied by a metallic tinkling sound, and she moved out of the deeper shadows to take a seat on the edge of the bed. In the dim light it was hard to make out much of her; it took a moment for him to even realize that she was dressed in nothing but a short sleeveless shift of some pale fabric, leaving a surprising amount of dusky skin bare. It was only when she crossed her shapely legs that he noticed the source of the tinkling sound; a chain, leading to a padded cuff fastened around her slender ankle.

"If you look to your left, there's a small locked chest in the bottom of that cabinet. He keeps more money and some valuables in there," she said, sounding perfectly calm and composed.

Zevran nodded, and went over to the indicated piece of furniture. He could feel her eyes watching him, as he checked the cabinet for traps before opening it. The chest was obvious, a small casket of dark burnished wood bound with brass. He lifted it out and set it on the desk, then set to work with his picklocks. He could feel himself flushing as several minutes passed before the lock finally snapped open; truly it was one of his worse skills.

"You're not very good at that," she said, suspiciously. "Are you certain you're a thief?"

He flashed a brief smile her way as he carefully opened the chest, still wary of traps. "It is not my primary occupation. More of a side line, you might say."

"Oh? Are you truly a whore then?"

"Born to one, but no, that is not my occupation either," he said distractedly, as he sorted through the contents of the chest. More coin, which he pocketed, some paper – mainly having to do with ownership of the ship, a house in Llomerryn, and several other properties, which were of no use or interest to the elf. In the bottom of the chest he found several velvet bags, of the sort typically used to protect gems or jewellery from damage, and carefully lifted them out, putting them one by one on the desk. The woman immediately sat up straighter, then rose to her feet and took a few steps in his direction, hands clenching into fists, stopping only when the chain went taunt and prevented her from moving any closer

" _Open them_ ," she all but hissed, dark eyes fixed on the pile of bags.

Zevran raised an eyebrow, then complied, starting with the largest. A heavy gold necklace slid out into his hand; a small fortune in gold, comprised of a thick tapered collar, set with an opaque pale blue gem – turquoise, he thought – with a series of linked gold rondels hanging down in a wedge from the front of it. A pair of them had come loose, he thought at first, before realizing they were earrings, patterned to match the rest.

"That's _mine_ ," the woman exclaimed angrily. "That _bastard_ – he said he'd sold them! Give it to me," she demanded, peremptorily holding out one hand. Zevran silently did as told. The woman's fingers were shaking as she undid the clasp in the back of the collar, which allowed it to hinged open from the sides, before lifting it up to fasten it around her own neck. She took the earrings next, fastening them on, then sighed, pressing one hand to the roundels where they overlay her collarbones and a wedge of her upper chest, drawing further attention to the magnificent bosom straining the fabric of her shift.

"Open the rest," she said, sounding much calmer. Zevran opened each bag in turn as she watched closely, both silent. More jewellery, in both gold and silver, some unset gems. She claimed a few more pieces, all much smaller – a heavy cuff bracelet, a gold ring set with another turquoise, and a round gold stud that she fastened through a tiny hole under her lower lip.

"You may keep the rest," she told him, tossing back her dark hair and turning to walk away, back over to the bed. She had a very sensual strut, he couldn't help noticing.

"Won't your husband question your possession of those?" he asked curiously.

She shrugged. "Only if he sees me with them. And even if he does, he will find it considerably harder to take them away from me a second time," she added, frowning as she sat back down on the edge of the bed again. She produced a dagger from somewhere and spun it in her fingers, then made it vanish again, so skillfully that Zevran wasn't entirely sure where she'd produced it from, though he could only think of three places.

He frowned. "You know, the mix of lethally armed but chained seems... rather perplexing," he pointed out.

The woman laughed, mirthlessly. "There's a long story behind that," she said.

Zevran grinned at her. "I am all ears."

That earned him a laugh, and a slow smile. "I think I like you," she said, and sat back, crossing her legs again. "Why not. And while I'm at it, there should be some more valuable odds and ends in that cabinet over there," she said, nodding to a tall cabinet to one side of a map table near the windows at the back of the room. "Have fun with all the locks," she added, smirking slightly.

He understood what she meant once he opened the cabinet doors; it was an apothecary cabinet, filled with dozens of little drawers, and every single one of them had its own little. "You are an evil woman," he observed, and flashed her a brilliant smile. "My favourite kind."


	16. Lessons in Pleasure

Zevran frowned as he set to work on yet another lock. So far he'd found little of actual value in the cabinet, or at least of enough value to be worth taking away and trying to sell. Or that it would be safe to attempt selling, some of it being substances whose possession it would be troublesome to explain away if discovered. He listen with half an ear as the woman told a long, rambling story about Rivaini seers, Rivaini who weren't seers, her mother, and money. What it in large part boiled down to was an old, too-familiar story; a desperate woman with an extra child – one who was both given to causing trouble and very pretty – and lacking the skills of a seer, common in the women of her line, that would have made her otherwise valuable. A gift of a substantial dowry to the mother, a forced marriage, and the girl-woman was sold off into what was essentially sexual servitude to a man more than twice her age.

"That fat pig had hopes of fathering a seer of his own on me," the woman – Isabela, she'd mentioned her name was at some point in the story – said, then tossed her head and snorted contemptuously.

Zevran looked at her curiously. "I am still confused as to why you have not fled. I doubt that one as capable as you seem with those knives would have much trouble either convincing the man to remove the lock himself, or simple picking it yourself and leaving."

She scowled sullenly, resting her chin on her raised knee, fingers toying with the cuff around her ankle. "I could just as easily slit his damned throat – if I did not mind spending the rest of my life a fugitive, unable to ever return home to Rivain. As to this lock..." she paused, and scowled again, fingers stroking the cuff. "My grandmother, who _was_ a seer, had a foretelling for me once, many years ago. Of which I will not speak, only to say that if I remove this lock myself, I will regret it. I must wait for the right conditions to remove it, if I wish to have real freedom."

She smiled suddenly, raising her fingers to touch the heavy gold around her neck. " _This_ was hers; my mother was always angry that it was willed to me, not to her. I think she willed it to me because she knew mother saw its value only as something to sell, not as something to treasure and pass on someday."

Zevran grunted, as he popped open another drawer. He smiled at the contents – several sizable pieces of good, gem-quality amber – and carefully poured them out into one of the velvet bags the jewellery had been in, then moved on to the next drawer.

Isabela stretched out on the bed, head propped up on one hand. "You'll be most of the night getting those drawers all opened," she observed.

Zevran grinned, and shot her a look. "Perhaps. But I am in no rush. It is not as if I have somewhere else I need to be at the moment."

"Or anything else you'd rather be doing?" she asked, one eyebrow arching enquiringly.

His grin widened. "I can think of several other things I'd rather be doing, especially in a room with a very beautiful woman and a large bed, but I think attempting them would be more likely to earn me a dagger to the throat than what reward I might otherwise wish. So delving into these locked drawers seems safer than investigating what other locked-up treasures the room might contain."

She looked surprised, then laughed. "You are well-spoken, for a thief," she said, then scowled slightly. "And correct that attempting to coerce me into bedding you would be an unwise move. I have little liking for being bedded."

"And that is a great pity," he said, seriously. "A beautiful woman like yourself should be treasured and pampered, treated like a very queen, not locked up and treated like a slave, like some bought bed-warmer whose feelings matter not. You should be wooed with praise and pleasure, decorated with jewels and fine clothing to enhance your beauty, not coerced and ignored."

She snorted, then looked away. "I have heard that sex can be... very pleasant, when done right. Such has not been my experience," she said, stiffly.

"Then your husband is a great fool, as well as a fat greasy bastard. He was a gem beyond price in his keeping and values it not."

She turned her head back, giving Zevran an interested look. "Flatterer," she said, then chewed hesitantly on her lip for a moment. "How would you praise me? What pleasures would you promise?"

Zevran grinned, and turned to look at her, leaning against the cabinet, ignoring the locked drawers for now. "I would speak to you of your great beauty – how warm your eyes are, how beautiful your smile, how perfect your complexion. Of how I would love to touch your skin, sure that it must be as soft as velvet and twice as smooth." He tilted his head to one side, crossing his arms across his chest as he gave her a heated look, and let his voice drop, low and intense. "I would speak of your hair, how beautiful it is, like a dark cloud wrapped around you. Of the redness of your lips, and how much I would love to kiss them – softly, at first, and then more urgently. Of the perfection of your breasts, and the shapeliness of those beautiful long legs, and how much I would love to have them wrapped around me, as I taught you the pleasures of your own body."

He fell silent. She stared silently at him for a long moment, then finally spoke again, hesitantly. "You are very skilled with words."

He grinned again, shedding his seriousness, and shrugged, then turned back to the cabinet, resuming work on the next lock. "Words can open things. Hearts and minds, doors, homes... locks, sometimes. Words can lie, can deceive, can cut you to the heart as sure as any knife blade might, or lift you up, and give you hope, bring you happiness, sooth away your pain. I have been trained in the use of words as much as in the use of my body, and other, lesser tools," he said, then abruptly swore as one of his lock-picks snapped off in the lock with an audible ping. He threw the broken handle to the floor. "Sadly I am far better with words then with these blasted tools, and these particular locks are not amenable to my blandishments."

She laughed suddenly. "Come here," she said, sounding amused.

He turned and looked at her, raised one eyebrow.

"Come here," she repeated, more firmly, sitting up and gesturing at a spot just in front of her.

He frowned slightly, then shrugged. She had not harmed him yet; he doubted she would now. He walked over, coming to a stop just in front of her, looking down at her while she looked him over, a speculative look in her eyes. She was chewing her lip again, her hands tightened almost into fists on the edge of the bed.

Finally she swallowed, and spoke again, challengingly. "Kiss me. Like you think I should be kissed," she said, voice low and hesitant, tilting back her head, chin lifted proudly.

He raised both eyebrows at that, then smiled warmly at her. "As you wish," he said, and held up one hand. "May I touch? Above the neck only, I promise."

She hesitated, then nodded. He tucked his left hand behind his back, making it clear only one hand would be used, then bent slowly down, reaching out with his right hand as he did so. He lightly set his fingertips against her chin and cheek, used just the faintest of pressures to guide her head to a better angle. He looked into her wary eyes for a moment, then let his own eyes drop mostly shut as he tilted his own head just so, before pressing his lips to hers. He let his fingers stroke upwards, flattening against her cheek, thumb curling along the edge of her chin. He brushed his closed lips lightly along hers, once, twice, then opened them just enough to draw her lower lip between his and trace its full curve with his tongue. He slid his hand slowly back, smoothing her hair back from the side of her face, his fingers sinking into the tousled mass of it while he carefully sucked and nibbled on her lips. He lifted his lips from hers for a moment, but only to reposition his mouth, opening it more, covering both her lips now, his tongue licking gently at them, coaxingly.

She made a surprised sound, a little sigh of pleasure, her lips opening just enough to admit his tongue. She stiffened as he slowly slid it into her mouth, then relaxed again as his tongue teased at hers. She drew back slightly, and laughed. "That feels... very odd," she said.

"But pleasant, yes?" he asked, face just inches from hers, looking directly into her dark eyes, hand caressing her hair back from her face a second time.

She smiled, and her nose wrinkled just slightly. "Perhaps. Do it again," she suggested, a touch eagerly.

So he did. One kiss led to another, then a third, a fourth. She learned quickly, and was soon kissing back with increasing interest. Her own hand rose up, touching his neck hesitantly, was withdrawn, then returned. He let his hand move around to cup the back of her neck, and she hesitantly did the same. For a long time there was silence, save for their deepening breaths and occasional small sounds as he showed her the different ways to bring lips and tongue and mouths together.

Finally he eased back, straightening again. He was short of breath, and his cock was making it known that it was very interested in everything the two of them had just been doing. Isabela was also short of breath, her deep inhalations having a thoroughly riveting effect on the motion of her breasts. She looked up at him for a long moment, then dropped her gaze. Her eyes stopped, and widened slightly, a flush coming to her cheeks and spreading in a delightful flood of colour right down to tinge the upper curved of her breasts. "Oh," she said, softly.

And laughed suddenly, a full-throated, joyous sound. The look she turned on him now was mischievous and pleased, the look of a woman who has just realized what power she might have over a man. Her hand reached up, and smoothed down over the rondels of gold again. "Would you like to plunder more than just my husband's money?" she asked, eye gleaming with anticipation.

"Yes," he said, truthfully, raking his eyes over her.

She laughed again, then crawled backwards onto the bed. "Show me," she said, voice low. "What you said earlier. The pleasures of my own body."

So he did.


	17. An Easy Killing

Zevran rolled over in the bed, and smiled as he looked at the sleeping woman beside him. Last night had been one of the most pleasant he'd ever had, certainly the most pleasant in recent memory. Isabela had proved to be a very apt student of the amatory arts. Not just apt; _enthusiastic_. His smile widened as he remembered how quickly she'd gone from nervous and cautious, to excited and questioning, wanting to experiment. How attentively she'd listened as he'd described various possible acts to her, in the times when they were recovering from actually trying one. She'd been near-insatiable, as he demonstrated the different things that could be done in different places fingers, with lips, with teeth and tongue and – whenever he recovered enough – with the more traditional implement. He had not been so thoroughly sated in years.

He peered beyond her, at the windows at the end of the room, bright sunlight shining through them, then frowned and gently shook the woman's shoulder. She was instantly awake and tense, until she recognized him and relaxed, giving him a wide happy smile. He gestured toward the window. "It is day. Will someone be coming in, to bring you food perhaps?"

She snorted and tossed her hair back from her face as she moved to sit up, little caring that the sheets slid free to expose her magnificent bosom to Zevran's gaze. Of course, he'd done more than just _look_ at them the night before; far more. He smiled and reached out to trace around the edge of one aureola with his fingertip as she continued speaking. "He doesn't trust his crew around me. Nor what I might do to his crew if one intruded here," she added, glancing pointedly where her daggers rested on a shelf above the head of the bed.

Then she moved to lay down on her stomach and reach under the bed, before sitting back up with a closed tin in hand. She pried the lid off, revealing a supply of hard tack, jerky, and dried fruit. "My rations," she said, and took out a couple of biscuits and a strip of jerky before offering the tin to Zevran. "There is water in a barrel over there," she added, gesturing to one corner of the room.

He took a biscuit and a couple pieces of dried apple, nodding in thanks for the food. "So... I could stay here for the day without anyone noticing?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at Isabela.

She grinned. "Yes," she said, and _raked_ her eyes up and down him. "I'm certainly in no hurry to see you leave," she added.

"Good," he said, and leaned forward to kiss the corner of her mouth. " _Very_ good," he added, then settled back to eat a bit of food. He would need his energy for the day ahead of him, he was sure.

* * *

It was almost saddening to have to put an end to their games, Zevran thought, as he carefully withdrew the envenomed dart from the side of Isabela's neck, where he'd placed his hand during their love-making a short time ago. As distracted by pleasure as she was, she hadn't noticed the sharp metal sliver concealed between Zevran's fingers, nor even felt its bite.

He eased himself out of the bed, cleaned himself up and redressed, then neatened the bed, tucking Isabela in so it looked like she was sleeping naturally. He cracked open one of the windows at the back to let a little fresh air in, letting the telltale odours of sex escape, then resumed opening drawers in the tall cabinet. He might as well make profitable use of his time while waiting for her husband to put in an appearance, which he should definitely do this evening, having failed to appear the next before.

As the sky darkened he checked on Isabela, and dosed her a second time; it would not do to have her awaken before he departed. Then closed the window, and looked around for a suitable spot. He leaned against the wall in one corner of the room, the one that would be hidden from view by the door to anyone entering, and waited patiently. It was full dark out when he finally heard footsteps approaching the door, then the scrape of a key in the lock. He was ready and waiting with his weapon in hand when the merchant-captain strode in, slamming the door shut behind him.

"Isabela! Lazy cow..." the man growled, and took two steps toward the bed.

And then Zevran's hand covered his mouth, and his dagger found its way up into the heart of the man Isabela had so aptly described as a fat, greasy bastard. "Compliments of the Crows," he hissed in the man's ear as he held him tightly. "Dama Maresol was quite annoyed with your recent behaviour."

He hit the hilt of his dagger expertly against the man's temple, then dropped his limp body to the floor, and stood there for a long moment, taking deep gulps of air. For a moment he wished Taliesin was _here_ , taking him in his arms even now, while the merchant bled out on the floor. He would be somewhere close by, Zevran was sure, watching the boat, ready to intercept Zevran when he emerged, now that the job was over.

Zevran glanced over at the bed, and suddenly smiled. He crouched down, sorting through the contents of the merchant's purse and belt pouches, pocketing a few small valuables before rising back to his feet, a tiny key in hand. He walked over to the bed, flipped back the sheets, and tried it on the locked cuff around Isabela's ankle, grinning as it turned smoothly, releasing the woman.

"A great fool indeed," he said, then bent down to press a kiss to her forehead. "You will be better off without him, I hope."

He relocked the door to make sure there would be no chance of someone walking in before Isabela roused and had a chance to evaluate her changed circumstances, then excited via the windows, dropping as silently as he could into the harbour. He swam off under the docks, head lifted high and mouth clamped tightly closed against the filthy waters. When he emerged onto the mucky shingle under their landward end, Taliesin was waiting there, with a blanket to wrap around him.

"Come," the man said, grinning approvingly at Zevran. "I've taken a room nearby; you can bathe and change there."

Zevran nodded jerkily, holding the blanket tightly around him. A bath would be good, but what would undoubtedly come _after_ the bath was all he was really interested in right now, just the thought of what Taliesin would do bringing new life to his tired member.

Taliesin started to turn away, then stopped, and knotted his hand into the blanket at Zevran's throat, dragging him close and kissing him hungrily. When he turned away again, Zevran followed happily, knowing his partner had the same thought in mind, the same desire.


	18. Control

Something was different, Zevran found himself thinking, as he twisted and moaned under Taliesin. Perhaps just that he _was_ thinking, was capable of it even in the aftermath of a kill. Capable of considering more than just _want_ and _desire_ and _lust_. That was certainly something different. He still felt those things, but it was not an overwhelming _need_ to fulfil them; he chose to do so, _chose_ to be here, with Taliesin, crying out under him.

He could equally well have chosen not to be. And that was different, too. He wondered what the change was caused by. Merely because he'd already been so thoroughly sated _before_ the kill? Or had there been some other change, some change in himself that he wasn't aware of, that had crept in over time?

He didn't know. And didn't, ultimately, care, as long as Taliesin kept doing what he was doing, driving hard into Zevran again and again, teeth closing with near-bruising pressure on the curve of the elf's shoulder, strong hands holding him down. He cried out and struggled – but not too hard – _wanting_ that heady mix of pain and pleasure, knowing he'd be sore and bruised tomorrow and wanting that, too, _enjoying_ the urgency of their rutting, the raw passion of it, not muted by any gentleness.

Afterwards he lay awake a long time, listening to Taliesin's steady breathing as the man napped briefly, as he sometimes did. He pretended to be asleep when Taliesin woke, and rose, then dressed and left, as he always did. Not one for spending the night, or for cuddling. Just sex, raw and hard, and then he was gone.

After he'd left, Zevran sighed, and rolled over in bed, watching the window nearby. Wondering, as he sometimes – rarely – let himself do, over the nature of the relationship he had with his partner. It was not love; he was not fool enough to think it was anything related to that tender emotion. Nor was it just lust; _that_ they could easily slake with others, if that had been all that there was between them.

Control, maybe. Taliesin's need to control him; his desire to be controlled? As his master had controlled his life, for so many years, for almost all the years of his life that he could remember. Thinking about it, he'd never truly been in control of his own life. Of his own decisions. He'd done what he was told to, what he was _expected_ to, what he was _required_ to, always. Except once, he corrected the thought. The one time he'd made a choice of his own, while not in his right mind, and left.

He remembered, melancholy with brief longing, his time among the Dalish. The kindness of Kariel. And his choice, once he was returned to himself again, to return to Master Edelbach. He couldn't decide if that had truly been a choice, or had been as much a necessity for him, as much a response to the requirements of others, as everything else in his life had been.

Perhaps the staying was _itself_ a choice. Here he was, after all, alone, unwatched, in an inn not far from the docks. Ships would be setting sail in a few hours, on the morning tide. If he wished to, how hard would it be to stand, to dress, to walk out of this room and onto a ship – either openly paying for passage, or stowing away – and just... leave. Go elsewhere. Abandon everything and start somewhere else.

Except, he knew, it would not be that easy. The Crows were everywhere, at least small covens of them in each country, and a Crow who fled was open game for all of them. A Crow who fled would be hunted down, and killed, because a Crow could not be allowed to exist who was not, in some degree, under the control of the masters. No. If he fled, he would be dead in a very short time, and likely in a very ugly way, as a lesson to others.

The closest a Crow might come to freedom was to become a master themselves, one of the ones who made decisions and ruled over others, rather than being ruled over themselves, or one of the rare greats who stood alone, a master Crow working in solitude. But even _they_ answered to others – other masters, the grandmaster Crow of whatever country they were in, and the ruling council that oversaw the Crows as a whole wherever they might be.

And, he knew, he had little interest in such a position. Oh, if his skill made him a master Crow some day, he would not refuse the honour. But he would not work for it nor manoeuvre for it, not politic for it as some did. Taliesin dreamed of such a thing, he knew – to be a master among masters, one of the ones giving orders to many. Zevran cared only that he have his few comforts, his little freedoms, and good jobs to do, with interesting targets to hunt and kill. That was all he really cared for – the _kill_. The moment when someone's life danced on the end of his blade, the fluttering beats of their heart transmitted through the dagger to his hand, or the horror in their eyes as their life's blood sheeted down their front from a slashed throat. The visceral feel of it, the _power_ , in ending another's life. Oh, he knew all the poisons and traps and tricks, so many other methods as well, with arrows or bolts or darts, or bludgeons, or garrottes; but him, and a sharp blade, and someone's life ending – _that_ was always the best.

He rose, eventually, and cleaned himself up as best he could with the half-pitcher of water on the washstand, hissing softly at the pain of abraded flesh. He took the precaution of dabbing some elfroot poultice on the worst spots; it would not do to take an infection because he had neglected to care properly for himself. That done, he dressed, in the change of clothes Taliesin had brought for him. A fairly plain set of clothing, but then Taliesin had very plain tastes, at least in things outside of bed. They were at least clean, dry, and comfortable. And he could always go home and change into something flashier, if he wished. Or go shopping, an activity he usually enjoyed.

He stretched out on the bed, and waited for dawn. And wondered what Isabela had thought, when she eventually woke – as she must have, by now – and found her husband dead, and her cuff removed. He grinned, and mentally wished her luck in her new life, however it proved to turn out.


End file.
